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
Feb 2026
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
March 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
January 2026
Latest News
Fusion energy: Progress, partnerships, and the path to deployment
Over the past decade, fusion energy has moved decisively from scientific aspiration toward a credible pathway to a new energy technology. Thanks to long-term federal support, we have significantly advanced our fundamental understanding of plasma physics—the behavior of the superheated gases at the heart of fusion devices. This knowledge will enable the creation and control of fusion fuel under conditions required for future power plants. Our progress is exemplified by breakthroughs at the National Ignition Facility and the Joint European Torus.
K. Kotoh, M. Tanaka, T. Sakamoto, S. Takashima, T. Asakura, T. Uda, T. Sugiyama
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 1 | July 2009 | Pages 184-189
Tritium, Safety, and Environment | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 1) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A8899
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Authors have been studying the adsorption or/and desorption behavior of H2 or/and D2 with synthetic zeolite packed-beds under the cryogenic condition of liquid nitrogen temperature, aiming at developing a pressure swing adsorption (PSA) process of hydrogen isotope separation useful for tritium processing in fusion fuel cycle and environmental tritium safety confinement, or convenient for deuterium production. We examined the mass transfer in the adsorption system of D2 diluted in H2 with zeolite packed-beds, experimentally and analytically. The results have been presented, where it is shown that the enrichment factor of D2 in packed-beds matches with estimated from the isothermal adsorption characteristics and that the mass transfer is controlled in the macro-pore media of adsorbents. In this work, the behavior of tracer HD added in a H2-D2 mixture with zeolite 5A and 13X packed-beds was experimentally investigated, and was analyzed by the curve-fitting as well as for the behavior of D2. In this report, the experimental results demonstrate that the breakthrough curves of HD exhibit analogous to those of D2 but reduced in the breakthrough time in comparison to the latter. The analytical results verify that the HD/H2 separation factor in packed-beds agrees with predicted from the isothermal adsorption characteristics, and show that the isotope effect on the mass transfer depends on the molecular mass effect.