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Conference Spotlight
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2026
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July 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Realta Fusion makes electricity, but not through heat conversion
Realta Fusion announced it has achieved direct energy conversion at the Wisconsin HTS Axisymmetric Mirror (WHAM), powering a lightbulb using electricity extracted from charged particles emitted by the plasma.
This process, called direct energy conversion (DEC), was theorized by Richard Post, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and has been demonstrated experimentally a few times, the earliest being the “Venetian blind” converter in the 1970s.
ICRS 14/RPSD 2022 speaker
Dr. Loughlin has been working in nuclear fusion since the mid-1980s. He obtained his Ph.D. from Birmingham University in the UK, developing neutron diagnostics for fusion reactors. He was involved in the first deuterium and tritium experiments in JET and TFTR in the 1990’s, measuring new world records for fusion power on three occasions. From 2007 to 2022, he was the Coordinator of Nuclear Analysis and Shielding at ITER and led the effort in the design of nuclear shielding for the ITER facility. He is now a Distinguished R&D Scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He was elected as a Fellow of the Institute of Physics in 2020.
Last modified July 29, 2022, 9:32am PDT
