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Nuclear Installations Safety
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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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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
W. T. Shmayda, C. R. Shmayda, G. Torres
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 75 | Number 8 | November 2019 | Pages 1030-1036
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1658482
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tritiated wate`r production is ubiquitous in facilities that handle tritium gas. Sources range from decontamination efforts, to the deliberate conversion of elemental tritium to tritiated water in processes that strive to reduce emissions to the environment, to gaseous effluents to the environment. At low concentrations, ranging from a few μCi/L to mCi/L, high throughputs are required to process the high-volume, low-activity water. Combined electrolysis and catalytic exchange (CECE) shows promise by offering high throughput, reliability, economic viability, and facile coupling to isotopic separation systems if necessary. This paper will discuss the features of two production-scale CECE facilities: a 7 m3/h throughput system that uses an alkaline electrolysis cell and a 21 m3/h throughput system that uses a proton exchange membrane electrolysis cell. The former is in service and has been modified to improve reliability; the latter is in the initial stages of commissioning.
