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2026 Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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Fusion Science and Technology
November 2025
Latest News
What’s the most difficult question you’ve been asked as a maintenance instructor?
Blye Widmar
"Where are the prints?!"
This was the final question in an onslaught of verbal feedback, comments, and critiques I received from my students back in 2019. I had two years of instructor experience and was teaching a class that had been meticulously rehearsed in preparation for an accreditation visit. I knew the training material well and transferred that knowledge effectively enough for all the students to pass the class. As we wrapped up, I asked the students how they felt about my first big system-level class, and they did not hold back.
“Why was the exam from memory when we don’t work from memory in the plant?” “Why didn’t we refer to the vendor documents?” “Why didn’t we practice more on the mock-up?” And so on.
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%).