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 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
May 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2026
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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.
W. R. Meier
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 3 | April 2005 | Pages 616-620
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Inertial Fusion Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A754
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Since the completion of the Robust Point Design (RPD) for a heavy ion fusion power plant, progress has been made in addressing key issues and some possible new directions have emerged. Work has continued on thick liquid wall chambers, which are particularly well suited to heavy ion fusion since they allow compact chambers minimizing the standoff for the final focus magnets and thus improving beam focusing on target. Work has continued on HIF indirect-drive targets in an attempt to allow larger spot sizes than the ~2 mm spots required by the baseline target in the RPD. A promising approach is the use of shine shields at both ends of the hohlraum, which allows beams to fill the entire 5-mm-radius target. This larger spot size target design opens the door to other driver and focusing schemes. Work has started exploring a modular driver approach in which many individual accelerators provide the total beam energy on target as opposed to the single accelerator with many (~100) individual beamlets threading common induction cores. Neutralized drift compression and plasma channel focusing are being studied as a way to deliver these high current beams to target. We have also started investigating new chamber designs that would be compatible with this focusing scheme, in particular designs using a vortex flow configuration to establish the thick liquid wall. This paper highlights progress since the last Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE) Conference.