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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Fusion Science and Technology
October 2025
Latest News
Shifting the paradigm of supply chain
Chad Wolf
When I began my nuclear career, I was coached up in the nuclear energy culture of the day to “run silent, run deep,” a mindset rooted in the U.S. Navy’s submarine philosophy. That was the norm—until Fukushima.
The nuclear renaissance that many had envisioned hit a wall. The focus shifted from expansion to survival. Many utility communications efforts pivoted from silence to broadcast, showcasing nuclear energy’s elegance and reliability. Nevertheless, despite being clean baseload 24/7 power that delivered a 90 percent capacity factor or higher, nuclear energy was painted as risky and expensive (alongside energy policies and incentives that favored renewables).
Economics became a driving force threatening to shutter nuclear power. The Delivering the Nuclear Promise initiative launched in 2015 challenged the industry to sustain high performance yet cut costs by up to 30 percent.
K. Isobe et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 48 | Number 1 | July-August 2005 | Pages 302-305
Technical Paper | Tritium Science and Technology - Tritium Handling Facilities | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A932
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The behavior of tritium release from the vacuum vessel of JT-60U during air exposure phase at controlled water vapor concentration and gas purging in the wall conditioning phase has been investigated. For the air exposure with varying water vapor concentrations of 40ppm, 300ppm, 680ppm and 3400ppm, tritium concentration in the vacuum vessel of JT-60U was measured. At each water vapor concentration, tritium concentration initially increased with time and then became steady finally. The steady tritium concentration increased with water vapor concentration. The total amount of tritium released from the vacuum vessel was 13MBq for 3400ppm. This amount is almost the same as that removed by 5 hours' H2-GDC, which has been the most effective method for tritium removal from JT-60U. This suggests that tritium in the vacuum vessel of JT-60U can be easily removed by water vapor. Tritium released into exhaust gas during gas purging was also measured for varying gases (H2, He and Ar), at different pressures and temperatures of the vacuum vessel. Tritium concentration of the exhaust gas was about 0.1Bq/cm3 at room temperature and was independent of gas species within the pressure from 0.05 to 0.3 Pa. This result indicates that isotope exchange of tritium with hydrogen molecules was not so active under these purge conditions.
