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Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Latest News
Smarter waste strategies: Helping deliver on the promise of advanced nuclear
At COP28, held in Dubai in 2023, a clear consensus emerged: Nuclear energy must be a cornerstone of the global clean energy transition. With electricity demand projected to soar as we decarbonize not just power but also industry, transport, and heat, the case for new nuclear is compelling. More than 20 countries committed to tripling global nuclear capacity by 2050. In the United States alone, the Department of Energy forecasts that the country’s current nuclear capacity could more than triple, adding 200 GW of new nuclear to the existing 95 GW by mid-century.
Yoshihiko Nagamine, Hideki Nakashima
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 35 | Number 1 | January 1999 | Pages 62-70
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST99-A78
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A magnetic thrust chamber concept in a laser fusion rocket is suitable for controlling the plasma flow, and it has an advantage in that thermalization with wall structures in a thrust chamber can be avoided. Rayleigh-Taylor instability would occur at the surface of expanding plasma, and it would lead to the degradation of thrust efficiency, which would result from diffusion of the plasma through an ambient magnetic field. A three-dimensional hybrid particle-in-cell code has been developed to analyze the plasma instability in the magnetic thrust chamber and to estimate the thrust efficiency. It is found that the instability would not have serious effects on the thrust efficiency; thrust efficiency in terms of momentum obtained here amounts to 65%. The effects of varying parameters on the thrust efficiency are also studied. The thrust efficiency seemed to reach its maximum value around c = 50 deg, where c is an angle subtended from the initial plasma position at the z axis to the solenoidal coil and its dependence on magnetic field energy produced by the coil is found to be weak for the cases studied here.