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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Fusion Science and Technology
August 2025
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The newest era of workforce development at ANS
As most attendees of this year’s ANS Annual Conference left breakfast in the Grand Ballroom of the Chicago Downtown Marriott to sit in on presentations covering everything from career pathways in fusion to recently digitized archival nuclear films, 40 of them made their way to the hotel’s fifth floor to take part in the second offering of Nuclear 101, a newly designed certification course that seeks to give professionals who are in or adjacent to the industry an in-depth understanding of the essentials of nuclear energy and engineering from some of the field’s leading experts.
Johnnie B. Cannon, Clay E. Easterly, Wallace Davis, Jr., Jack S. Watson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 12 | Number 3 | November 1987 | Pages 341-353
Technical Paper | Safety/Environmental Aspect | doi.org/10.13182/FST87-A25067
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Radioactive and nonradioactive effluents will be released routinely during normal operation of near-term commercial fusion power reactors. Nonradioactive effluents will be essentially the same as those released at conventional steam-electric power plants. Radioactive effluents will consist of activated corrosion products and tritium. Most radioactive releases will originate from liquid-waste processing systems and from ventilation systems of various buildings where radioactivity may become airborne. These effluents will have some potential for environmental impact; however, the significance of the impact will depend in part on the concentration and release rate of the effluent. The type of reactor design (e.g., tokamak, mirror, etc.) has minimal influence on activation product releases. Activation products released are influenced primarily by the materials chosen for structural components, and the quantities released are influenced primarily by the coolant choice. The most likely choices for the coolant are water and helium. Preliminary release estimates for water- and helium-cooled fusion reactors are found to be similar to those of fission reactors with the same coolant and of comparable size and structural materials. Data are insufficient to do more than speculate about normal releases from liquid-metal-cooled reactors.