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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Fusion Science and Technology
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
Y. C. Francis Thio, Scott C. Hsu, F. Douglas Witherspoon, Edward Cruz, Andrew Case, Samuel Langendorf, Kevin Yates, John Dunn, Jason Cassibry, Roman Samulyak, Peter Stoltz, Samuel J. Brockington, Ajoke Williams, Marco Luna, Robert Becker, Adam Cook
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 75 | Number 7 | October 2019 | Pages 581-598
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1598736
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Plasma-jet-driven magneto-inertial fusion (PJMIF) is the only embodiment of magneto-inertial fusion that has the unique combination of stand-off implosion and high implosion velocity (50 to 150 km/s). It uses inexpensive plasma guns for all plasma formation and implosion and has potential for a relatively high repetition rate from 1 to 2 Hz. Its configuration is compatible with the use of a thick liquid wall that doubles as a tritium breeding blanket as well as a coolant for extracting the heat out of the fusion reactor. The PJMIF operational parameter-space allows for the possibility of using a sufficiently dense target plasma for the target plasma to have a high . If such a high- plasma could be realized, it would help to suppress micro and magnetohydrodynamic instabilities, giving its target plasma classical transport and energy confinement characteristics. Its open geometry and moderate time and spatial scales provide convenient diagnostics access. Diagnostics accessibility, high shot rate, and low cost per shot should enable quick resolution of technical issues during development, thus the potential for enabling rapid research and development of PJMIF. There are a number of challenges for PJMIF, however, including being at a very early stage of development, developing the required plasma guns, dealing with potential liner nonuniformities, clearing the chamber of residual high-Z gas between shots, and developing the repetitive pulsed-power component technologies. Over the last 3 years, the development of the Plasma Liner Formation Experiment (PLX-) has been undertaken to explore the physics and demonstrate the formation of a spherical liner by the merging of a spherical array of plasma jets. Two- and three-jet merging experiments have been conducted to study the interactions of the jets. Six- and seven-jet experiments have been performed to form a piece of the plasma liner. A brief status report on this development is provided in this paper.