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Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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WIPP: Lessons in transportation safety
As part of a future consent-based approach by the federal government to site new deep geologic repositories for nuclear waste, local communities and states that are considering hosting such facilities are sure to have many questions. Currently, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico is the only example of such a repository in operation, and it offers the opportunity for state and local officials to visit and judge for themselves the risks and benefits of hosting a similar facility. But its history can also provide lessons for these officials, particularly the political process leading up to the opening of WIPP, the safety of WIPP operations and transportation of waste from generator facilities to the site, and the economic impacts the project has had on the local area of Carlsbad, as well as the rest of the state of New Mexico.
Nuclear Criticality Safety Division 2025 Conference
Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA)
Group Leader in the Criticality Safety Research Group of the Nuclear Safety Research Center
Dr. Satoshi Gunji completed his PhD in Engineering at Tohoku University before joining the Power and Industrial Systems Research and Development Center of Toshiba Corporation in 2007 as a researcher in the Nuclear Reactor System Analysis Group. Before the accident at the Tokyo Electric Power Company's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, his main work was on criticality safety of next-generation light water reactor fuel. He was also an experimenter and an operator of the Toshiba Nuclear Critical Assembly.
After Toshiba decided to decommission the NCA, he moved to the Criticality Safety Research Group at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), where he currently works. At the time, JAEA was proceeding with plans to modify the criticality assembly STACY to conduct criticality assessments of the fuel debris generated by the FDNPP accident. He participated in this project as a criticality safety expert and planned the criticality experiment plans. STACY achieved first criticality in 2024, and he has been directing subsequent experiments.
Last modified August 26, 2025, 10:54am CDT
