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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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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Fusion Science and Technology
October 2025
Latest News
Shifting the paradigm of supply chain
Chad Wolf
When I began my nuclear career, I was coached up in the nuclear energy culture of the day to “run silent, run deep,” a mindset rooted in the U.S. Navy’s submarine philosophy. That was the norm—until Fukushima.
The nuclear renaissance that many had envisioned hit a wall. The focus shifted from expansion to survival. Many utility communications efforts pivoted from silence to broadcast, showcasing nuclear energy’s elegance and reliability. Nevertheless, despite being clean baseload 24/7 power that delivered a 90 percent capacity factor or higher, nuclear energy was painted as risky and expensive (alongside energy policies and incentives that favored renewables).
Economics became a driving force threatening to shutter nuclear power. The Delivering the Nuclear Promise initiative launched in 2015 challenged the industry to sustain high performance yet cut costs by up to 30 percent.
A. B. Sazonov, G. V. Veretennikova, E. P. Magomedbekov
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 54 | Number 2 | August 2008 | Pages 584-587
Technical Paper | Materials Interactions | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-A1883
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Mineral and synthetic oils used as lubricants or operating fluids in pumps are mixtures of branched or cyclic saturated hydrocarbons. They are chemically inert but their slow partial oxidation is possible even at room temperature. Specific activity of pump oils contacted with gaseous tritium for a long time may exceed 1013 Bq/kg.Studies of waste oils show that more than 90% of the radionuclide is bound with oxidation products. This selectivity is owned to predominant formation of quasifree tritons or 3HeT+ ions when one of the two nuclei in the T2 molecule decays. The sequence of ion-molecule triton transport reactions is the mechanism responsible for accumulation of tritium by oxidation products with higher proton affinity.The most effective technique of oil decontamination is adsorption of tritiated species by polar adsorbents (silica gels, zeolites). The detritiation degree for these adsorbents amounts to 95%. Then complete thermal oxidative destruction can be used to convert adsorbed organic compounds into CO2 and water. Thus, adsorption, thermal oxidation and adsorbent regeneration may be proposed as the technology of tritium recycling since HTO returns to the isotope separation system. As a result, the radiation danger related with storage of high activity waste oils can be significantly decreased.
