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Spent fuel recycling and conditioning topic of U.S.-Japan meeting
Officials with the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management discussed spent nuclear fuel recycling and conditioning with counterparts from Japan during the 13th U.S.-Japan Technical Meeting of the Civil Nuclear Energy Research and Development Working Group, held recently in Santa Fe, N.M.
Bruce Lairson, Ryan Smith, Jeff Guckian, Travis Ayers, Suhas Bhandarkar
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 59 | Number 1 | January 2011 | Pages 262-266
Technical Paper | Nineteenth Target Fabrication Meeting | doi.org/10.13182/FST10-3686
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Laser entrance hole (LEH) windows for hohlraums must have minimal thickness yet must contain low-temperature tamping gas in a reproducible envelope at 52 kPa. Given the high cost of a window failure, it is important to understand variability in the finished windows. Polyimide LEH window pressure deflection profiles were measured at 18 K. The shape and magnitude of pressure deflections of LEH windows were well described using thin film elastic mechanics. Subsequently, 24 windows with 3.9-mm apertures were selected from several production lots to measure reproducibility. The windows were cooled to 18 K, and their leak rates, deflections to 52 kPa, and burst pressures were measured. The mean window deflection at 18 K was 260 m, with a standard deviation of 20 m. Variability in window deflections was well described by an anisotropic initial strain model. Window burst pressure was found to obey first-order Weibull statistics. The predicted failure rate for the use conditions was extrapolated to be <0.1%.