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2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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Breaking ground on a new approach to construction
The drive to Kairos Power’s reactor demonstration site in Oak Ridge, Tenn., is not only scenic—it’s historic. Nearly 85 years ago, roughly 30,000 construction workers transformed orchards and farmland into a key Manhattan Project site. Depending on your route, you may pass by one of the three gatehouses that were once military checkpoints controlling access to Atomic Energy Commission production facilities.
Heiner Meldner
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 69 | Number 3 | March 1979 | Pages 438-441
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE79-A19963
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) pellet center burnup of fission reactor waste, namely, 14-MeV neutron fission of the very long-lived actinides that pose storage problems, is calculated for realistic target designs. A major advantage of pellet center burnup is safety: Only milligram quantities of highly toxic and active material need to be present in the fusion chamber, whereas blanket burnup reqUires the continued presence of tons of actinides in a small volume. One ICP plant can transmute the actinide waste of up to ten power equivalent fission reactors, i.e., large-scale development appears to provide a foreseeable-future technology that greatly reduces the necessity of high integrity waste storage (burial) time: from 107 to just over 102 yr.