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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.
Weston M. Stacey, Jr.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 16 | Number 2 | September 1989 | Pages 268-275
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/FST89-A29161
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
It is conjectured that the number of fusion events catalyzed by a single muon is orders of magnitude greater for deuterium and tritium concentrated in a transition metal than in gaseous form and that the recent observation of 2.5-MeV neutrons from a D2O electrolytic cell with palladium and titanium cathodes can thereby be interpreted in terms of cosmic muon-catalyzed deuterium-deuterium fusion. This suggests a new fusion reactor concept consisting of deuterium and tritium concentrated in transition metal fuel elements in a fusion core that surrounds an accelerator-produced muon source. The feasibility of net energy production in such a reactor is established in terms of requirements on the number of fusion events catalyzed per muon. The technological implications for a power reactor based on this concept are examined. Finally, the potential of such a concept as a neutron source for materials testing and tritium and plutonium production is briefly discussed.