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WIPP: Lessons in transportation safety
As part of a future consent-based approach by the federal government to site new deep geologic repositories for nuclear waste, local communities and states that are considering hosting such facilities are sure to have many questions. Currently, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico is the only example of such a repository in operation, and it offers the opportunity for state and local officials to visit and judge for themselves the risks and benefits of hosting a similar facility. But its history can also provide lessons for these officials, particularly the political process leading up to the opening of WIPP, the safety of WIPP operations and transportation of waste from generator facilities to the site, and the economic impacts the project has had on the local area of Carlsbad, as well as the rest of the state of New Mexico.
Xin Mao, Xuebing Peng, Peng Liu, Siqing Feng, Wei Song, Xinyuan Qian, Tiejun Xu
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 81 | Number 8 | November 2025 | Pages 901-915
Regular Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2025.2503122
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A single divertor module is generally composed of an inner target (IT), a dome, an outer target (OT), and a cassette for a tokamak fusion reactor. As the plasma-facing components (PFCs), the IT, dome and OT are highly likely to be destroyed, while the cassette, in principle, is not damaged. The neutron irradiation dose anticipated for the China fusion engineering test reactor (CFETR) divertor is about one order of magnitude higher than that of ITER. Therefore, the neutron-rich environment in the future device needs the implementation of teleoperation for component replacement.
These days, divertors have two maintenance strategies, integral and separated, respectively. In the second version, the water-cooled divertor design of CFETR, a separate maintenance scheme was chosen in which a damaged PFC is removed from the vacuum vessel. The overall structure design of the IT, the remote handling (RH) compatibility of the IT, and the IT stainless steel support design are presented first in this paper. Then, a material choice suitable for the IT target is discussed. Finally, a hydraulic analysis of the IT cooling system and a thermal analysis of the bolts are carried out to testify to the rationality of the IT target structure design. This provides a possible technical solution for the PFC structural design in the fusion reactor divertor.