Fusion reactor nucleonics: status and needs

The national fusion technology effort has made a good start at addressing the basic nucleonics issues, but only a start. No fundamental nucleonics issues are seen as insurmountable barriers to the development of commercial fusion power. To date the fusion nucleonics effort has relied almost exclusively on other programs for nuclear data and codes. But as we progress through and beyond ETF type design studies the fusion program will need to support a broad based nucleonics effort including code development, sensitivity studies, integral experiments, data acquisition etc. It is clear that nucleonics issues are extremely important to fusion development and that we have only scratched the surface.