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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Deep geologic repository progress—2025 Update
Editor's note: This article has was originally published in November 2023. It has been updated with new information as of June 2025.
Outside my office, there is a display case filled with rock samples from all over the world. It contains a disk of translucent, orange salt from the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.; a core of white-and-bronze gneiss from the site of the future deep geologic repository in Eurajoki, Finland; several angular chunks of fine-grained, gray claystone from the underground research laboratory at Bure, France; and a piece of coarse-grained granite from the underground research tunnel in Daejeon, South Korea.
Dingqing Guo, Chao Chen, Zhen Wang, Jian Lin, Bing Zhang, Daochuan Ge, Zhibin Chen
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 78 | Number 2 | February 2022 | Pages 103-110
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2021.1960089
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The fusion reactor fueled by deuterium and tritium will generate many neutron activation products, causing occupational exposure and radiation risk. The minimization of occupational radiation exposure (ORE) is one of the safety goals for fusion reactors. However, detailed designs and management schemes are still lacking for fusion reactors, and the ORE evaluations are still well simplified. In this paper, an integrated assessment approach is proposed for fusion reactors at the conceptual or detailed design stage. The core idea is to estimate the ORE by referring to the dose rates and work efforts of mature fission reactors and ITER and modifying the data of these similar systems by a proportional coefficient according to the differences of component scale, operating environment, etc. The results showed that water cooling fusion reactors will generate the highest collective dose of 2635 p-mSv/year, while the PbLi cooling ones come next with about 1684 p-mSv/year and the helium cooling ones are the least. This method will contribute to fusion reactor design, operation, and maintenance optimization at the earlier stages and provide guidance to reduce the overall potential ORE to workers.