ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2026
Nuclear Technology
March 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Chernobyl at 40 years: Looking back at Nuclear News
Sunday, April 26, at 1:23 a.m. local time will mark 40 years since the most severe nuclear accident in history: the meltdown of Unit 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union.
In the ensuing four decades, countless books, documentaries, articles, and conference sessions have examined Chernobyl’s history and impact from various angles. There is a similar abundance of outlooks in the archives of Nuclear News, where hundreds of scientists, advocates, critics, and politicians have shared their thoughts on Chernobyl over the years. Today, we will take a look at some highlights from the pages of NN to see how the story of Chernobyl evolved over the decades.
Y. C. Francis Thio, Scott C. Hsu, F. Douglas Witherspoon, Edward Cruz, Andrew Case, Samuel Langendorf, Kevin Yates, John Dunn, Jason Cassibry, Roman Samulyak, Peter Stoltz, Samuel J. Brockington, Ajoke Williams, Marco Luna, Robert Becker, Adam Cook
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 75 | Number 7 | October 2019 | Pages 581-598
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1598736
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Plasma-jet-driven magneto-inertial fusion (PJMIF) is the only embodiment of magneto-inertial fusion that has the unique combination of stand-off implosion and high implosion velocity (50 to 150 km/s). It uses inexpensive plasma guns for all plasma formation and implosion and has potential for a relatively high repetition rate from 1 to 2 Hz. Its configuration is compatible with the use of a thick liquid wall that doubles as a tritium breeding blanket as well as a coolant for extracting the heat out of the fusion reactor. The PJMIF operational parameter-space allows for the possibility of using a sufficiently dense target plasma for the target plasma to have a high . If such a high- plasma could be realized, it would help to suppress micro and magnetohydrodynamic instabilities, giving its target plasma classical transport and energy confinement characteristics. Its open geometry and moderate time and spatial scales provide convenient diagnostics access. Diagnostics accessibility, high shot rate, and low cost per shot should enable quick resolution of technical issues during development, thus the potential for enabling rapid research and development of PJMIF. There are a number of challenges for PJMIF, however, including being at a very early stage of development, developing the required plasma guns, dealing with potential liner nonuniformities, clearing the chamber of residual high-Z gas between shots, and developing the repetitive pulsed-power component technologies. Over the last 3 years, the development of the Plasma Liner Formation Experiment (PLX-) has been undertaken to explore the physics and demonstrate the formation of a spherical liner by the merging of a spherical array of plasma jets. Two- and three-jet merging experiments have been conducted to study the interactions of the jets. Six- and seven-jet experiments have been performed to form a piece of the plasma liner. A brief status report on this development is provided in this paper.