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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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Latest News
Proving DRACO will deliver
The United States is now closer than it has been in over five decades to launching the first nuclear thermal rocket into space, thanks to DRACO—the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Orbit.
Ion Cristescu, F. Priester, D. Rapisarda, A. Santucci, M. Utili
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 4 | May 2020 | Pages 446-457
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2020.1716456
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The development of commercial fusion power production using deuterium and tritium has been ongoing worldwide for decades and the European version of DEMO will undergo conceptual design between 2021 and 2027. Among the different ways to provide electrical power, nuclear fusion will be publicly accepted if the environmental impact is at tolerable levels. The auxiliary power requirements of fusion power reactors will need to be optimized, and heat will need to be efficiently converted to electrical power through the usage of high-temperature steam. On the other hand, heat might need to be intermittently stored to account for pulsed plasma operation, on the expense of the temperature level available for steam generation. Tritium is highly mobile and its management as far as containment and confinement are concerned becomes more difficult with the increasing temperatures of the structural materials; any effluents and releases should be kept to an absolute minimum. Therefore, tritium containment and confinement equipment and procedures need to be well integrated into the design and into the operation of fusion power reactors.
This paper focuses on the topics of the main tritium technologies under development in the EU DEMO Breeding Blanket Program, covering especially tritium breeding and extraction technologies. In addition, the identification of the main tritium sources as far as permeation and escape into the environment are concerned and the main barriers for the mitigation of tritium release into the environment are introduced.