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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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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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.
E.T. Cheng, R.J. Cerbone
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 30 | Number 3 | December 1996 | Pages 1654-1658
Nonelectric Applications of Fusion | doi.org/10.13182/FST96-A11963188
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A small tokamak-based fusion reactor can be attractive for actinide waste transmutation. Equilibrium concentrations of transuranium isotopes were estimated in a molten-salt based fusion transmutation reactor. Nuclear performance parameters were derived for two types of fusion-driven transmutation reactors: Pu-assisted and minor actinides-only systems. The minor actinide-only burning system appears to be the ultimate fusion transmutation reactor. Because such a transmutation system can destroy the minor actinides generated in 35 LWRs, each of which produces the same thermal power as the transmutation reactor. However, a Pu-assisted transmutation reactor may achieve the same thermal power at a lower fusion power because of the higher energy multiplication in the blanket. It can therefore be developed as a shorter-term technology to demonstrate the viable long-term solution to nuclear waste.
