ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Aug 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2026
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2026
Latest News
NRC issues draft EA/FONSI for Duane Arnold restart
Efforts by NextEra Energy to restart the Duane Arnold nuclear power plant as early as 2029 continue to move forward with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's preliminary environmental assessment and determination that the restart would have no significant environmental impacts.
On Thursday, the NRC posted a draft environmental assessment and a finding of no significant impact for the Palo, Iowa, facility; the Federal Register notice was published on Monday. The Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing is a cooperating agency on the draft EA, as the DOE is considering providing financial assistance to the restart project.
Yuki Edao, Yasunori Iwai
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 2 | February 2020 | Pages 135-140
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1704572
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A passive catalytic reactor without heating is required to enhance the safety of a fusion facility. A precious metal catalyst without heating is not suitable to oxidize tritium under conditions of low hydrogen concentration and room temperature. In addition, under a moisture condition, tritium oxidation of a precious metal catalyst drops drastically since moisture adsorbs active sites on the surface of the catalyst. Hence, as a method of tritium oxidation under a moisture condition at room temperature, we have focused on bacterial oxidation of tritium by hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria in natural soil to realize a passive reactor. In this study, we investigated the effect of hydrogen concentration on tritium oxidation by hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria in natural soils to understand the characteristic of tritium oxidation by hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria from the viewpoint of engineering. In our experiment, efficiency of tritium oxidation by a natural soil was obtained at room temperature in the range of hydrogen concentration from 0.5 to 10 000 parts per million (ppm) under a moisture condition. The efficiency of tritium oxidation was the highest at a hydrogen concentration of 0.5 ppm, which equals the value of the hydrogen concentration in air. Our results show that hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria could efficiently oxidize tritium with a low concentration of hydrogen, at room temperature, with high moisture. This showed a tendency opposite to a metal catalyst. A bioreactor using hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria complemented a conventional catalytic reactor using a precious metal catalyst since hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria could oxidize tritium efficiently with a low concentration of hydrogen, at room temperature, with high moisture.