Research Dr. Stacey s current research projects focus on fusion plasma physics to develop and apply methods to design and analyze the physics aspects of present fusion experiments and future fusion reactors. The primary emplasis at present is on the interaction of the hot plasma core, the cooler plasma edge where neutral atoms are important, and the surrounding material wall. Another project is on fusion reactor conceptual design, where he is developing codes to analyze the characteristics of future fusion reactors for electricity production, tritium production, nuclear waste tranmutation, etc. He is interested in the development of environmentally benign fusion reactors. In the nuclear reactor physics area, the goal is to develop improved methods for the analysis of the physics aspects of nuclear reactors.
Emphasis is on variational methods, and reactor kinetics.
The funding for this work is from the U. S. Department of Energy. Thermal Stability of the Tokamak Plasma Edge. W. M. Stacey, J. Mandrekas, and F. Kelly. W. M. Stacey. Density Limits in Tokamaks.