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September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Latest News
DOE issues new NEPA rule and procedures—and accelerates DOME reactor testing
Meeting a deadline set in President Trump’s May 23 executive order “Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy,” the DOE on June 30 updated information on its National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) rulemaking and implementation procedures and published on its website an interim final rule that rescinds existing regulations alongside new implementing procedures.
Leif Holmlid
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 75 | Number 3 | April 2019 | Pages 208-217
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2018.1546090
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fusion power generators employing muon-catalyzed nuclear fusion can be developed using a new type of laser-driven muon generator. Results using this generator have been published, and those data are now used to derive the possible fusion power using this generator. Muon-catalyzed fusion has been studied for 60 years, and the results found in such studies are used here to determine the possible power output. Since the muon source gives complex mixtures of mesons and leptons, which have very different interactions with the measuring equipment, the number of negative muons formed is not easily found exactly, but reasonable values based on numerous published experiments with different methods are used to predict the energy output. With deuterium-tritium as fuel, a fusion power generator employing the novel muon generator could give more than 1 MW thermal power. The thermal power using pure deuterium as fuel may be up to 220 kW initially: It will increase with time up to over 1 MW due to the production of tritium in one reaction branch. The power required for running a modern laser and the muon generator is estimated to be of the order of 100 W, thus giving a total energy gain of more than 10 000. The harmful radiation from such fusion power generators is mainly in the form of neutrons from the fusion reactions. Thus, thick radiation shields are necessary as for almost all other fusion concepts. This means that medium-scale thermal fusion power generators of the muon-catalyzed fusion type may become available within a relatively short time.