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Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
Meeting Spotlight
2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
Standards Program
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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High-temperature plumbing and advanced reactors
The use of nuclear fission power and its role in impacting climate change is hotly debated. Fission advocates argue that short-term solutions would involve the rapid deployment of Gen III+ nuclear reactors, like Vogtle-3 and -4, while long-term climate change impact would rely on the creation and implementation of Gen IV reactors, “inherently safe” reactors that use passive laws of physics and chemistry rather than active controls such as valves and pumps to operate safely. While Gen IV reactors vary in many ways, one thing unites nearly all of them: the use of exotic, high-temperature coolants. These fluids, like molten salts and liquid metals, can enable reactor engineers to design much safer nuclear reactors—ultimately because the boiling point of each fluid is extremely high. Fluids that remain liquid over large temperature ranges can provide good heat transfer through many demanding conditions, all with minimal pressurization. Although the most apparent use for these fluids is advanced fission power, they have the potential to be applied to other power generation sources such as fusion, thermal storage, solar, or high-temperature process heat.1–3
Wenyu Cheng, Linlin Zeng, He Zhou, Jie Liang, Ke Deng, Qin Zhang, Wei Liu
Nuclear Technology | Volume 211 | Number 3 | March 2025 | Pages 500-512
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2024.2338508
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tritium causes internal dose hazards to humans. Currently, tritium in the environment mainly comes from nuclear power plants, and tritiated water (HTO) is the main form of liquid emission. Therefore, online monitoring activity of tritium in the aqueous medium is vital for protecting human health, and it can warn of the operation status of nuclear power plants. In this paper, we present an improved structure of plastic scintillating fiber (PSF) and a PSF array design, and the detection parameters of PSF arrays with different radii and lengths under different radius detection chambers are simulated using Geant4. Based on the simulation results, the detector is designed, and the minimum detectable activity concentration (MDAC) of the detector is calculated. With calculated MDACs down to 3.09 Bq/L, the proposed design can meet the Chinese requirements for HTO release of inland nuclear power plants of <100 Bq∙L−1. Therefore, the detector designed with a PSF array can be applied to online monitoring of tritium in the aqueous medium.
