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
Feb 2026
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
February 2026
Nuclear Technology
January 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Playing the “bad guy” to enhance next-generation safety
Sometimes, cops and robbers is more than just a kid’s game. At the Department of Energy’s national laboratories, researchers are channeling their inner saboteurs to discover vulnerabilities in next-generation nuclear reactors, making sure that they’re as safe as possible before they’re even constructed.
Kieran J. McCarthy, Maria A. Ochando, Francisco Medina, Bernardo Zurro, Carlos Hidalgo, Maria de los Angeles Pedrosa, Ignacio Pastor, Jesús A. Herranz, Alfonso Baciero
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 46 | Number 1 | July 2004 | Pages 129-134
Technical Paper | Stellarators | doi.org/10.13182/FST04-A548
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A fine-grained mobile pyrolytic graphite limiter was biased to generate radial electric fields in the plasma edge region of the TJ-II stellarator to improve confinement operation modes. Indeed, for the range of voltages applied (up to ±300 V), spectroscopic data indicate that limiter biasing does not induce significant external influxes of impurities. Also, after boronization of the vacuum chamber, increases of ~100% in electron density, together with reductions of the order of 40% in Zeff, are observed during limiter biasing. Here, we report on the first study of impurity behavior in the TJ-II during externally induced radial electric fields. For this, different spectroscopic methods were employed, and the results obtained were compared to assess impurity behavior and to evaluate the effectiveness of such biasing on plasma confinement in TJ-II.