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Latest News
DOE launches UPRISE to boost nuclear capacity
The Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy has launched a new initiative to meet the government’s goal of increasing U.S. nuclear energy capacity by boosting the power output of existing nuclear reactors through uprates and restarts and by completing stalled reactor projects.
UPRISE, the Utility Power Reactor Incremental Scaling Effort, managed by Idaho National Laboratory, is to “deliver immediate results that will accelerate nuclear power growth and foster innovation to address the nation’s urgent energy needs,” DOE-NE said in its announcement.
N. A. P. Kiran Kumar, K. J. Leonard, G. E. Jellison, L. L. Snead
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 67 | Number 4 | May 2015 | Pages 771-783
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-875
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The study presents the high-dose behavior of dielectric mirrors specifically engineered for radiation tolerance. Alternating layers of Al2O3/SiO2 and HfO2/SiO2 were grown on sapphire substrates and exposed to neutron doses of 1 and 4 displacements per atom (dpa) at 458 ± 10 K in the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR). In comparison to previously reported results, these higher doses of 1 and 4 dpa result in a drastic drop in optical reflectance, caused by a failure of the multilayer coating. HfO2/SiO2 mirrors failed completely when exposed to 1 dpa, whereas the reflectance of Al2O3/SiO2 mirrors reduced to 44%, eventually failing at 4 dpa. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) observation of the Al2O3/SiO2 specimens showed SiO2 layer defects, which increase in size with irradiation dose. The typical size of each defect was ≈8 nm in 1-dpa specimens and ≈42 nm in 4-dpa specimens. Buckling-type delamination of the interface between the substrate and first layer was typically observed in both 1- and 4-dpa HfO2/SiO2 specimens. Composition changes across the layers were measured in high-resolution-scanning–TEM mode using energy dispersive spectroscopy. A significant interdiffusion between the film layers was observed in the Al2O3/SiO2 mirror, although it was less evident in the HfO2/SiO2 system. The ultimate goal of this work is to provide insight into the radiation-induced failure mechanisms of these mirrors.
