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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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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.
Gary S. Was, Lawrence M. Lidsky
Nuclear Technology | Volume 43 | Number 3 | May 1979 | Pages 289-300
Technical Paper | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT79-A19218
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A purging process was developed that will permit operation of fusion reactor blankets employing solid LiAlO2 as the breeder material at fuel temperatures of <600°C. The low fuel temperature would greatly reduce the problems of fuel sintering, densification, and volume expansion that occur at fuel temperatures in excess of 900°C without degrading the plant thermal efficiency. The process consists of heating the blanket to a specified temperature for a given time at regular intervals to release tritium held up in the breeding material As an example, a detailed purging cycle was developed for the breeder rod shim rod blanket that uses LiAlO2 in the form of micron-size particles compacted into millimetre-size pellets and is designed for low-temperature operation. Tritium inventory, doubling time, purging time, purging temperature, purging frequency, and particle size are the parameters used to evaluate the process. Calculations indicate that breeder particle sizes ranging from 20 to 50 μm and purging temperatures ranging from 600 to 700°C can result in purge times of <1 h with three or more weeks between purges, and a doubling time of 7 yr for a blanket inventory limit of 5 kg and a breeding ratio of <1.02.