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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Latest News
Take steps on SNF and HLW disposal
Matt Bowen
With a new administration and Congress, it is time once again to ponder what will happen—if anything—on U.S. spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste management policy over the next few years. One element of the forthcoming discussion seems clear: The executive and legislative branches are eager to talk about recycling commercial SNF. Whatever the merits of doing so, it does not obviate the need for one or more facilities for disposal of remaining long-lived radionuclides. For that reason, making progress on U.S. disposal capabilities remains urgent, lest the associated radionuclide inventories simply be left for future generations to deal with.
In March, Rick Perry, who was secretary of energy during President Trump’s first administration, observed that during his tenure at the Department of Energy it became clear to him that any plan to move SNF “required some practical consent of the receiving state and local community.”1
A. Honig, Q. Fan, C.-K. Hsu, X. Wei
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 28 | Number 5 | December 1995 | Pages 1859-1864
Technical Paper | Inertial Confinement Fusion Targets | doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A30426
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The emissivities and accommodation coefficients for helium and deuterium gas were measured for polystyrene target shells from several production batches. The shells varied in wall thickness, diameter and surface conditions as viewed with an optical microscope. For emissivity measurements, it is desirable for the radiative heat transfer to dominate over conductive heat transfer via the surrounding gas and the sample (and thermometer) mount. This is achieved by maintaining very low gas pressure (free molecular conduction regime) and by a novel contact-less thermometric measurement, in which the temperature of the shell is determined from the strongly temperature-dependent shell outgassing rate. The accommodation coefficient is also obtained in the process. Emissivity and accommodation coefficient results are reported in the temperature range 250 – 350K. The values are very low, in the 0.01 range for the former, and 0.003 range for the latter, which augurs well for thermal stability after the shroud removal prior to a target shot. For measurements at lower temperatures (down to 4K), other contact-less thermometry methods are proposed, with electronic magnetic susceptibility shown to be very favorable.