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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Fusion Science and Technology
February 2024
Latest News
Can hydrogen be the transportation fuel in an otherwise nuclear economy?
Let’s face it: The global economy should be powered primarily by nuclear power. And it probably will by the end of this century, with a still-significant assist from renewables and hydro. Once nuclear systems are dominant, the costs come down to where gas is now; and when carbon emissions are reduced to a small portion of their present state, it will become obvious that most other sources are only good in niche settings. I mean, why use small modular reactors to load-follow when they can just produce that power instead of buffering it?
S. Meitner, L. R. Baylor, N. Commaux, D. Shiraki, S. Combs, T. Bjorholm, T. Ha, W. McGinnis
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 72 | Number 3 | October 2017 | Pages 318-323
Technical Papers | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1333854
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Disruptions are sudden unplanned terminations of tokamak plasmas that can lead to high thermal loads and runaway electrons (REs). Unmitigated disruptions in ITER are predicted to dissipate up to 350 MJ of thermal energy and generate several MA of multi-MeV runaway electrons. This intense heat and energetic particle beams can cause localized melting of the plasma facing components. Reliable and fast acting disruption mitigation (DM) techniques are therefore a critical requirement for ITER to safeguard the machine from damage.
The proven method for DM centers on injecting a large quantity of impurity particles into the plasma to quickly increase density and radiate the thermal energy to mitigate thermal effects. Additionally, if the particle injection can achieve sufficient density, it can create collisional drag which suppresses the formation of REs. Shattered pellet injection (SPI) has proven to be the most effective method of particle injection thus far attempted and is planned for the DM system on ITER. Recently, a new three-barrel second SPI (SPI-II) system has been developed for use on DIII-D to study injection effects from multiple toroidal locations and pellet timing. The three pellets can be formed and fired individually or simultaneously. The SPI-II has provisions for making and firing pure species pellets with deuterium, neon, or argon and also deuterium layered pellets with a core of neon and mixtures of neon and deuterium.