ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
GAO: Clarification of HLW definition could save DOE billions
A clearer definition of what constitutes high-level radioactive waste could save the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management “tens of billions of dollars” in waste management costs and accelerate its cleanup schedule by decades, according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
DOE-EM’s efforts to manage waste resulting from legacy spent nuclear fuel reprocessing have been hindered for decades by the ambiguity of the statutory definition of HLW as laid out in the Atomic Energy Act and Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the report states. While admitting that the DOE has taken steps to overcome this ambiguity, the GAO says that the department has not fully evaluated all available opportunities to treat and dispose of waste more economically as either transuranic or low-level radioactive waste.
Dietmar Wagner, Dominik Schmid-Lorch, Jörg Stober, Hendrik Höhnle, Fritz Leuterer, Emanuele Poli, Francesco Monaco, Max Münich, Harald Schütz, ASDEX Upgrade Team
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 58 | Number 2 | October 2010 | Pages 658-665
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST10-A10890
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The new electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH) system at the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak allows for an adjustment of the polarization of the injected ECRH beam during plasma discharges. Three sniffer probes for millimeter wave stray radiation, with broad and polarization insensitive radiation characteristics, have been installed around the torus to monitor nonabsorbed radiation. The influence of varying ECRH-beam polarization on the detected stray radiation is studied. For perpendicular X2 heating the minimum detectable amount of wrong (O2-mode) polarization is found to be 5%. The system also allows full change of polarization from X2 to O2 mode, as it is useful for O2 heating above the X2-mode cutoff. These experiments show a high directivity of the stray radiation due to the toroidally inclined O2-mode injection.
