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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Latest News
ANS joins others in seeking to discuss SNF/HLW impasse
The American Nuclear Society joined seven other organizations to send a letter to Energy Secretary Christopher Wright on July 8, asking to meet with him to discuss “the restoration of a highly functioning program to meet DOE’s legal responsibility to manage and dispose of the nation’s commercial and legacy defense spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste (HLW).”
L. C. Cadwallader, D. A. Petti
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 3 | May 2002 | Pages 635-641
Safety and Safety System | Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology Tsukuba, Japan November 12-16, 2001 | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A22665
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The current approach envisioned to fabricate targets for inertial fusion energy power plants is diffusion of a deuterium-tritium (D-T) gas mixture through the walls of the plastic shell targets at very high pressures (peaking at values up to 128 MPa) and modest temperatures (∼ 400 K). The use of high gas pressure during fabrication is required so that the D-T gas rapidly diffuses into the pellet, which enables the fabrication facility to satisfy the power plant's fueling requirements. D-T gas mixtures at such high pressures raise safety concerns that must be addressed in the design. The combustion of D and T in air is discussed in this paper, as well as high pressure gas hazards and possible means to mitigate these hazards. The US Department of Energy guidance on tritium handling and storage is summarized here. Issues of safety and reliability of various protection systems are also discussed to support designers in tradeoff analyses of confnement types.