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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2025
Latest News
New coolants, new fuels: A new generation of university reactors
Here’s an easy way to make aging U.S. power reactors look relatively youthful: Compare them (average age: 43) with the nation’s university research reactors. The 25 operating today have been licensed for an average of about 58 years.
Gheorghe Bulubasa, Alina Niculescu, Maria Craciun, Ciprian Bucur, George Ana, Anisia Bornea
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 81 | Number 4 | May 2025 | Pages 310-314
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2024.2353967
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
At present, there are several methods for hydrogen isotope separation (in elemental form), the most important being cryogenic distillation, thermal diffusion, and gas chromatography. However, these methods have a series of drawbacks, namely, high complexity, high energy consumption, and associated costs. Taking into account these disadvantages, a promising separation method is the one based on solid metallic membranes because of its advantages like low energy consumption and reduced complexity. This method uses the difference between some of the isotopes’ properties, namely, solubility; diffusivity; and, implicitly, permeability. This work envisages the integration of an isotopic separation module, based on membrane permeation, on the exhaust gas line from the current experimental rigs employed at ICSI, to recover and store the hydrogen isotopes. We obtained a maximum separation factor of 5.66 for the lowest studied concentration of deuterium in the hydrogen isotopic mixture (0.05 atomic fraction). The results show that hydrogen isotope separation is possible using palladium/silver membranes. Still, the throughput of the permeated gas is very low, and a significant number of stages will be necessary to obtain the desired purity (above 99.5%).