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September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Deep geologic repository progress—2025 Update
Editor's note: This article has was originally published in November 2023. It has been updated with new information as of June 2025.
Outside my office, there is a display case filled with rock samples from all over the world. It contains a disk of translucent, orange salt from the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.; a core of white-and-bronze gneiss from the site of the future deep geologic repository in Eurajoki, Finland; several angular chunks of fine-grained, gray claystone from the underground research laboratory at Bure, France; and a piece of coarse-grained granite from the underground research tunnel in Daejeon, South Korea.
P. C. Souers, E. M. Fearon, E. R. Mapoles, J. D. Sater, G. W. Collins, J. R. Gaines, R. H. Sherman, J. R. Bartlit
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 14 | Number 2 | September 1988 | Pages 855-863
Tritium Properties and Interactions with Material | Proceedings of the Third Topical Meeting on Tritium Technology in Fission, Fusion and Isotopic Applications (Toronto, Ontario, Canada, May 1-6, 1988) | doi.org/10.13182/FST88-A25242
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The expected value of nuclear spin polarization to inertial confinement fusion is recapitulated. A comparison of brute force polarization versus dynamic nuclear polarization, as applied to solid deuterium-tritium, is given, and the need for a long triton polarization memory time (longitudinal nuclear relaxation time) is shown. The time constant for 25 mol%T2-50 DT-25 D2 (D-T) is a short 0.3 s at 5 K and waiting in the presence of tritium radioactivity lowers it to 0.1 s. Enriched 90 to 96% molecular DT has been synthesized and held 3 to 4 hours at 10 K, which lowers the overall J=1 T2 concentration to about 0.1%. The resulting memory time can be raised in this way to 0.7 to 0.8 s. These samples were then melted and nHp added, which increased the memory times to 6 to 8 s - an increase of twenty-fold over regular D-T at 5 to 6 K. The theory shows that the species shortening the triton memory time is the J=1 T2, which can be reduced in our samples only by radioactive self-catalysis. Cryogenic distillation is considered as a possible means of removing the J=1 T2 from molecular DT.