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Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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
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Glass strategy: Hanford’s enhanced waste glass program
The mission of the Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection (ORP) is to complete the safe cleanup of waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons development. One of the most technologically challenging responsibilities is the safe disposition of approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste historically stored in 177 tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
ORP has a clear incentive to reduce the overall mission duration and cost. One pathway is to develop and deploy innovative technical solutions that can advance baseline flow sheets toward higher efficiency operations while reducing identified risks without compromising safety. Vitrification is the baseline process that will convert both high-level and low-level radioactive waste at Hanford into a stable glass waste form for long-term storage and disposal.
Although vitrification is a mature technology, there are key areas where technology can further reduce operational risks, advance baseline processes to maximize waste throughput, and provide the underpinning to enhance operational flexibility; all steps in reducing mission duration and cost.
B. A. Nelson, T. R. Jarboe, D. J. Orvis, A. K. Martin, J. Xie, C. Zhang, L. Zhou
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 27 | Number 3 | April 1995 | Pages 333-336
Compact Torus (Field-Reversed Configuration, Spheromak) Concepts | doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A11947099
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Coaxial helicity injection is used to form and sustain low aspect ratio tokamaks at currents of up to 250 kA in the Helicity Injected Tokamak experiment. Plasma currents can be sustained at an average of 225 kA for 2 ms, with on axis electron thermal energies up to 80 eV, or for longer times, 140 kA average for 7 ms, many resistive diffusion times. Spectroscopic measurements of the higher current discharges suggest burn-through of oxygen impurities. These plasmas have a rotating n = 1 distortion, appearing only on the outer, bad-curvature region. Equilibria reconstruction, fitting to experimental data, shows tokamak q profiles achieved with hollow plasma current profiles.
