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Latest News
College students help develop waste-measuring device at Hanford
A partnership between Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) and Washington State University has resulted in the development of a device to measure radioactive and chemical tank waste at the Hanford Site. WRPS is the contractor at Hanford for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management.
A. Donato, R. Andreani
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 29 | Number 1 | January 1996 | Pages 58-72
Technical Paper | Materials Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST96-A30656
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The design and construction of a fusion reactor represent a very difficult challenge from the viewpoint of developing materials that will allow fusion to be realized as an economic, safe, and environmentally acceptable energy source. In fact, the operating conditions of fusion reactor components will require the use of materials capable of safely sustaining thermal, mechanical, and irradiation loads never met in the past while at the same time producing negligible amounts of radioactivity and radioactive waste. An overview is presented of the development status and the perspectives of austenitic stainless steels, martensitic stainless steels, vanadium alloys, and fiber-reinforced ceramic composites (SiC/SiC), which are the materials currently being investigated for fusion reactor application. Limitations and possibilities of their use with reference to both the next experimental reactor, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), and the future Demonstration Reactor (DEMO) are examined. While for the experimental reactor ITER, research is directed toward the optimization of existing materials like austenitic steels, for future commercial reactors, ceramic matrix composites appear to offer enormous potential as a structural material because of their high-temperature properties, low density, low thermal expansion, and very low neutron activation.