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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Latest News
NNSA awards BWXT $1.5B defense fuels contract
The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration has awarded BWX Technologies a contract valued at $1.5 billion to build a Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment (DUECE) pilot plant in Tennessee in support of the administration’s efforts to build out a domestic supply of unobligated enriched uranium for defense-related nuclear fuel.
George H. Miley et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 1 | July 2009 | Pages 533-539
Experimental Facilities and Nonelectric Applications | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 1) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A8958
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Earlier studies have described Inertial Electrostatic Confinement (IEC) fusion power concepts using either D-He3 or p-B11 fuels to provide a high-power density fusion propulsion system capable of aggressive deep space missions. However, this requires a large multi-GW thruster forcing a long term development program. As a first step, we examine here a progression of near-term IEC thrusters, stating with a 1-10 kWe electrically-driven IEC jet thruster for satellites followed by a small 50-100 kW IEC fusion thruster module for next generation large deep space spacecraft. The initial electrically-powered unit is a novel multi-jet plasma thruster based on spherical IEC technology using electrical input power from a solar panel. This type of unit is discussed and its advantages for next step electrically driven units are identified.
