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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 8–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Latest News
Illinois legislature lifts ban on nuclear energy, funds clean energy
The Illinois General Assembly passed a clean energy bill on October 30 that would, in part, lift a 30-year moratorium on new nuclear energy in the state and create incentives for more energy storage.
Yuqian Chen, Longbin Liu, Yahong Xie, Jianglong Wei, Yuming Gu, Wen Deng, Fang Wang, Lixin Yang, Chundong Hu
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 81 | Number 3 | April 2025 | Pages 269-278
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2024.2384669
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Neutral beam injection is an important auxiliary heating method for magnetic confinement nuclear fusion. To further optimize the steady-state operation of the high-temperature plasma in the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), a higher beam energy is required for the high-power, long-pulse neutral beam injection system. The most critical technology to achieve this goal is the upgrade of the ion source accelerator. This paper analyzes the beam optics of the multiaperture accelerator for the extraction of a deuterium ion beam of 120 keV/50 A with a divergence angle of less than 1 deg root-mean-square. The effects of the number of grids, shapes of plasma grids (PGs), grid gaps, voltage ratio, and plasma parameters on beam optics were assessed by numerical simulation. The results allowed optimization of the PG shape; they also indicated that the tetrode configuration can reduce the beam divergence angle effectively while the triode configuration can extract a higher current. These conclusions provide guiding significance for the selection and parameter design of the EAST neutral beam injector ion positive source with a 120-keV accelerator.