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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2025
Latest News
New coolants, new fuels: A new generation of university reactors
Here’s an easy way to make aging U.S. power reactors look relatively youthful: Compare them (average age: 43) with the nation’s university research reactors. The 25 operating today have been licensed for an average of about 58 years.
Charles W. Hartman, John Thomas
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 81 | Number 5 | July 2025 | Pages 495-504
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2024.2425585
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A conceptual framework, supported and illustrated by computational modeling, is reported for a high-current snowplow discharge mode in coaxial electrodes consisting of a conical inductive storage section and a center conductor extension tapered in radius with a sigmoid curve from a 4-cm-radius to a 3-mm-radius stem. The inductive storage section can be loaded with Bθ flux by a relatively low-power snowplow discharge. In the sigmoid-tapered extension, the flux is shown to flow along the taper, increasing both field strength and flow velocity as it accelerates to a smaller radius, resulting in a petawatt flow of Bθ flux along the 3-mm-radius center conductor stem at 40 MA and 200 cm/µs.
Next, we present calculations of pinching a 0.8-cm-long pure deuterium-tritium (DT) target located as if in the stem. The pinch, formed when the petawatt flow passes over the target, was calculated to produce over half a gigajoule of DT fusion yield. Additionally, a half-scale 20-MA calculation was performed, and an approximate yield scaling formula was found with a dependence on the drive current to the fourth power.