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Conference Spotlight
2026 Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Construction begins on UNITY-2 fusion fuel cycle test facility
Canada’s Fusion Fuel Cycles Inc. (FFC), a joint venture between Canadian Nuclear Laboratories and Japan’s Kyoto Fusioneering, announced that it has officially entered the construction phase of its flagship project, the Unique Integrated Testing Facility (UNITY-2), at CNL’s Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario.
William Ziehm, L. Dale Thomas
Nuclear Technology | Volume 211 | Number 1 | April 2025 | Pages S12-S20
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2024.2323242
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Missions to the Kuiper belt have previously been carried out only as flybys and with very small payloads. Investigating launch windows for Kuiper belt missions supported by centrifugal nuclear thermal propulsion (CNTP) contributes to defining its operational use case. Results indicate that CNTP enables rendezvous missions to the Kuiper belt, both with direct transfer trajectories or planetary gravity assist trajectories, although there are many challenges to making these mission architectures feasible. The direct trajectories have transfer times of roughly 14 to 16 years while combining CNTP with gravity assists from Jupiter could lower transfer time to as low as 10 to 12 years to Kuiper belt objects such as Pluto and Quaoar. These missions are then shown to inform the architecture of the CNTP injection stage vehicle, which can be supported by heavy and super-heavy commercial launch vehicles with a single launch. Last, drawbacks of the mission and vehicle architectures are given that impose limits on the use case for CNTP on these missions.