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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Latest News
ANS joins others in seeking to discuss SNF/HLW impasse
The American Nuclear Society joined seven other organizations to send a letter to Energy Secretary Christopher Wright on July 8, asking to meet with him to discuss “the restoration of a highly functioning program to meet DOE’s legal responsibility to manage and dispose of the nation’s commercial and legacy defense spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste (HLW).”
A. Szöke, R.W. Moir
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 20 | Number 4 | December 1991 | Pages 1012-1021
Advanced Energy Conversion/Storage and Exotic Concepts | doi.org/10.13182/FST91-A11946975
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This article describes, in broad outline, a nuclear power plant that generates power by means of repetitive, low-yield explosions in an underground chamber. Such a plant can be built in the near future by using modest extensions of existing technology, and it could be economically competitive if certain parts of the cost are controlled. This is in contrast to magnetic and inertial confinement fusion, of which the technical and economic feasibility will remain highly uncertain for the foreseeable future. Technical improvements of the envisioned plant can be introduced gradually with corresponding reductions in cost of power production. With advancing technology, an increasingly larger fraction of the power can be extracted from fusion reactions, thus providing a smooth transition to a fusion-based economy. Eventually, pure (inertial) fusion schemes could be incorporated into the power plant in a natural way, thereby shortening the time required to achieve large-scale use of fusion power–-possibly by decades. This article considers both the technical aspects of this route to fusion power and the relevant issues of public policy.