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
March 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
January 2026
Latest News
NRC grants license for TRISO-X fuel manufacturing using HALEU
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has granted X-energy subsidiary TRISO-X a special nuclear material license for high-assay low-enriched uranium fuel fabrication. The license applies to TRISO-X’s first two planned commercial facilities, known as TX-1 and TX-2, for an initial 40-year period. The facilities are set to be the first new nuclear fuel fabrication plants licensed by the NRC in more than 50 years.
M. R. Jana, Tapan M. Patel, U. K. Baruah, S. M. Belsare, K. S. Bhope, B. Choksi, N. S. Contractor, S. S. Khirwadkar, M. Mehta, P. K. Mokaria, N. P. Patel, T. H. Patel, R. Swamy, S. Tripathi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 81 | Number 2 | February 2025 | Pages 179-190
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2024.2366732
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The back plate is an important component of the ion source because of its multiple roles including heat load removal during beam operation. The main components of the back plate are (1) a Type 304L stainless steel (SS304L) magnet positioning plate that holds samarium cobalt permanent magnets required for the confinement of ion source plasma, (2) an oxygen-free electronic copper cooling plate with 35 inner and 8 outer cooling channel grooves (each of which is 4 × 1.8 mm2) that is vacuum brazed with a SS304L magnet positioning plate, and (3) a SS304L magnet cover plate. In this paper, the back plate is successfully fabricated, and a high heat flux experiment is done at the High Heat Flux Test Facility Center with an electron beam power of 200 kW for 458 s. The uniform incident heat flux is 2.5 MW/m2. Demineralized water at 34°C is supplied at the rate of 1 kg/s to the cooling plate at inlet pressure of 8.2 bars to remove the high heat load. The surface temperature of the copper plate is measured by an infrared camera, and three temperature regions are observed. The measured average surface temperature of the cooling plate is ~152°C. The bulk water temperature rise ΔTw is ~39.42°C. The estimated absorbed heat flux is ~2.04 MW/m2, and the heat absorption coefficient is 81.6%. The measured leak rate after the heat flux test is 1.6 × 10−8 mbars∙L/s. These High Heat Flux Test experimental results will be useful to study the thermomechanical performance of the back plate and to understand the effect of increasing the beam pulse length.