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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
NNSA awards BWXT $1.5B defense fuels contract
The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration has awarded BWX Technologies a contract valued at $1.5 billion to build a Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment (DUECE) pilot plant in Tennessee in support of the administration’s efforts to build out a domestic supply of unobligated enriched uranium for defense-related nuclear fuel.
Charles W. Forsberg, David M. Carpenter, Dennis G. Whyte, Raluca Scarlat, Liu Wei
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 4 | May 2017 | Pages 584-589
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1289450
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Three advanced power systems use liquid salt coolants that generate tritium and thus face common challenges to prevent release of the tritium to the environment. The Fluoride-salt-cooled High-temperature Reactor (FHR) uses the same graphite-matrix coated-particle fuel as High-Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors (HTGRs) and clean fluoride salt coolants. Molten salt reactors (MSRs) dissolve the fuel in a fluoride or chloride salt and release the fission product tritium to the salt. High-magnetic-field fusion machines may use liquid salt cooling and blankets because of the very high power densities of this new class of fusion machine. The three technologies can be coupled to a Nuclear Air-Brayton Combined Cycle (NACC) enabling variable electricity with base-load reactor operation.
Converging requirements for tritium control in 700°C liquid salts are leading to cooperative programs across technologies; tritium models that combined generation, chemistry, metal corrosion and transport; and new tritium control technologies using advanced carbon forms, metals produced by additive manufacturing and other technologies.