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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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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
L. K. Heung
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 28 | Number 3 | October 1995 | Pages 859-864
Tritium Safety | Proceedings of the Fifth Topical Meeting on Tritium Technology in Fission, Fusion, and Isotopic Applications Belgirate, Italy May 28-June 3, 1995 | doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A30512
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the new Replacement Tritium Facility (RTF) at the Savannah River Site, gloveboxes and stripper systems are used to minimize tritium release to the environment. The RTF was built to handle kilogram levels of tritium. It was started up and has been in operation since January 1994. The glovebox-stripper system has performed well in confining tritium leaks from the process. The tritium level in the gloveboxes has been maintained at below 0.1 Ci/m3 under normal conditions. During a large leak of tritium gas from the process to a glovebox, the tritium concentration in the glovebox shot up to about 4000 Ci/m3. However, there was no significant release of tritium to the environment. The tritium reading in the glovebox decreased to a 10 Ci/m3 level after 6 days of stripping. The performance of the glovebox-stripper system during this tritium leak and the possible factors for the long and slow decay of the tritium concentration in the glovebox are discussed in this paper.
