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2025: The year in nuclear
As Nuclear News has done since 2022, we have compiled a review of the nuclear news that filled headlines and sparked conversations in the year just completed. Departing from the chronological format of years past, we open with the most impactful news of 2025: a survey of actions and orders of the Trump administration that are reshaping nuclear research, development, deployment, and commercialization. We then highlight some of the top news in nuclear restarts, new reactor testing programs, the fuel supply chain and broader fuel cycle, and more.
Paul W. Fisher
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 21 | Number 2 | March 1992 | Pages 794-799
Material; Storage and Processing | doi.org/10.13182/FST92-A29845
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The tritium proof-of-principle (TPOP) experiment was designed and built by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to demonstrate the formation and acceleration of the world's first tritium pellets for fueling of future fusion reactors. Many parameters measured during the course of the experiment have been used to evaluate the physical properties of solid tritium. Pellet size was measured as a function of equilibrium fill pressure. A model was developed to predict this information from values of thermal conductivity, vapor pressure, and density reported in the literature. Good agreement between theory and experiment was found for both deuterium and tritium pellets. Evaluation of breakaway pressure data for deuterium pellets indicates that the shear strength of deuterium is about equal to its ultimate tensile strength. Tritium shear strength appears to be about twice that of deuterium at temperatures around 8 K. The reduction in pellet diameter due to barrel erosion for deuterium was about twice that for tritium pellets at a given velocity. This was also indicative of the greater strength of tritium relative to deuterium.