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The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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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
Gaetano Aiello, Theo Scherer, Konstantinos Avramidis, Natalia Casal, Thomas Franke, Mario Gagliardi, Gerd Gantenbein, Mark Henderson, John Jelonnek, Andreas Meier, Gabriella Saibene, Sabine Schreck, Dirk Strauss, Manfred Thumm, Minh Quang Tran, Christoph Wild, Eckhard Woerner
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 75 | Number 7 | October 2019 | Pages 719-729
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1643690
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nuclear fusion power plants require electron cyclotron (EC) heating and current drive (H&CD) systems for plasma heating and stabilization. High-power microwave beams between 1 and 2 MW generated by gyrotrons propagate in a dedicated waveguide transmission system to reach the plasma at specific locations. Key components in this transmission system are the chemical vapor deposition diamond windows on both the torus and gyrotron sides of the reactor as they allow transmission of high-power beams while acting as confinement and/or vacuum boundaries. Diamond windows consist of a polycrystalline diamond disk integrated in a metallic housing. In the conventional configuration, there is one disk perpendicular to the beam propagation direction. A steering mechanism is then used to deploy the fixed frequency beam at different locations in the plasma. This is, for instance, the configuration used in the ITER EC H&CD system. Movable parts close to the plasma will be problematic for the lifetime of launchers in future fusion reactors like the DEMOnstration nuclear fusion reactor (DEMO) because of the higher heat loads and neutron fluxes. Therefore, one of the alternative concepts is to deploy the beams directly at the desired resonant magnetic flux surface by frequency tuning gyrotrons. In this case, diamond windows able to work in a given frequency range, like the diamond Brewster-angle window, are required. It is an elegant and compact broadband window solution with the disk inclined at the Brewster angle with respect to the beam direction. This paper shows the development and the current state of different diamond window concepts including the design, the numerical analyses, and application of standard construction nuclear codes and of a specific qualification program.