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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
Meeting Spotlight
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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Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Zap Energy hits 37-million-degree electron temperatures in compact fusion device
Zap Energy announced April 23 that it has reached 1-3 keV plasma electron temperatures—roughly the equivalent of 11 to 37 million degrees Celsius—using its sheared-flow-stabilized Z-pinch approach to fusion. Reaching temperatures above that of the sun’s core (which is 10 million degrees Celsius temperature) is just one hurdle required before any fusion confinement concept can realistically pursue net gain and fusion energy.
Xia Wen, Fuzhi Li, Xuan Zhao
Nuclear Technology | Volume 194 | Number 3 | June 2016 | Pages 379-386
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT15-74
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The rapid development of nuclear power plants (NPPs) in China has caused increasing attention to be paid to the treatment of low-level radioactive wastewaters (LLRWs). One possibility is the application of vacuum membrane distillation (VMD). In this study, a commercial hydrophobic microporous polypropylene membrane was investigated with respect to nuclide decontamination and permeate flux performance in the VMD process. The results demonstrate that vacuum pressure has the most obvious influence on permeate flux, followed by feed temperature and feed velocity. Despite the influence of operational parameters, effective nuclide filtering can be achieved with average decontamination factor (DF) values consistently higher than 1700. The salt concentration in the feed solution decreases the permeate flux and nuclide filtering. However, the VMD process still offers high average DF values of 6000 for Cs(I), 3700 for Sr(II), and 8300 for Co(II), even when the feed salt concentration reaches 80 g L−1. After operation at a high salt concentration, there is no obvious variation in the chemical composition on the membrane surface based on the attenuated total reflectance–Fourier transform infrared spectra. A brief comparison shows that the process integrating reverse osmosis and VMD is a promising method for treating LLRWs and minimizing radioactive waste in NPPs.