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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Fusion Science and Technology
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The journey of the U.S. fuel cycle
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
While most big journeys begin with a clear objective, they rarely start with an exact knowledge of the route. When commissioning the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson didn’t provide specific “turn right at the big mountain” directions to the Corps of Discovery. He gave goal-oriented instructions: explore the Missouri River, find its source, search for a transcontinental water route to the Pacific, and build scientific and cultural knowledge along the way.
Jefferson left it up to Lewis and Clark to turn his broad, geopolitically motivated guidance into gritty reality.
Similarly, U.S. nuclear policy has begun a journey toward closing the U.S. nuclear fuel cycle. There is a clear signal of support for recycling from the Trump administration, along with growing bipartisan excitement in Congress. Yet the precise path remains unclear.
Takumi Hayashi, Hirofumi Nakamura, Kanetsugu Isobe, Kazuhiro Kobayashi, Makoto Oyaizu, Yasuhisa Oya, Kenji Okuno, Toshihiko Yamanishi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 1 | July 2011 | Pages 369-372
Materials Development & Plasma-Material Interactions | Proceedings of the Nineteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE) (Part 1) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12382
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In order to investigate the behavior of hydrogen isotope on the water-metal boundary, a series of deuterium permeation experiment from heavy water vessel through pure iron piping was performed as a function of temperature ranging 423~573 K at 15 MPa. During the experiment, the surface of iron piping was oxidized to magnetite at the heavy water boundary and then deuterium would generate by Schikorr reaction. This deuterium could be detected by mass spectrometer, which monitored the inside gases of the piping under vacuum. The result showed clearly that more than 85 % of the deuterium permeated through the metal piping and detected as deuterium gas (D2) under vacuum. The D2 permeation rate reached some stabilized value as a function of temperature.