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2026 Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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NRC proposes rule changes in response to EO
In April, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14270, “Zero-Based Regulatory Budgeting To Unleash American Energy,” which calls for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (along with the Department of Energy, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the Environmental Protection Agency) to issue a “sunset rule” to effectively nullify certain regulations in no more than five years.
Jiaqi Zhang, Akifumi Iwamoto, Keisuke Shigemori, Masanori Hara, Kohei Yamanoi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 80 | Number 3 | May 2024 | Pages 550-557
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2197810
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fuel pellets made of a solid deuterium-tritium (D-T) mixture are supplied for inertial confinement fusion. Characterization of the D-T mixture is fundamental for the design and production of high-quality fuel pellets. However, during the phase transition, isotopologue fractionation may lead to fractional crystallization in the solid phase of the hydrogen isotopologue mixture. If this phenomenon occurs in solid D-T fuel, it will reduce the reaction efficiency of nuclear fusion. Currently, there is no effective observation method for fractional crystallization. This study aims to quantify the degree of fractional crystallization of the hydrogen isotopologues mixture in the solid phase using the refractive index measurement. For this method, refractive index information on the hydrogen isotopologues is necessary, therefore the temperature and wavelength dependences of the refractive index of hydrogen isotopologues need to be measured. Then, using the refractive index distribution of the solid D-T will show the composition distribution of isotopologues for assessing the fractional crystallization. Particularly, as far as we know, this is the first time that the measured values of the refractive index versus wavelength of solid D2 have been obtained. Understanding the wavelength dependence of the refractive index for the dispersion compensation allows for a wider application of the fractionated crystallographic observation method.