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Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Zap Energy hits 37-million-degree electron temperatures in compact fusion device
Zap Energy announced April 23 that it has reached 1-3 keV plasma electron temperatures—roughly the equivalent of 11 to 37 million degrees Celsius—using its sheared-flow-stabilized Z-pinch approach to fusion. Reaching temperatures above that of the sun’s core (which is 10 million degrees Celsius temperature) is just one hurdle required before any fusion confinement concept can realistically pursue net gain and fusion energy.
Tom Braun, Sung Ho Kim, Monika M. Biener, Alex V. Hamza, Juergen Biener
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 73 | Number 2 | March 2018 | Pages 229-236
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1392203
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Spherical ablator shells that contain a thin layer of ultralow-density polymer foam have recently attracted attention in the inertial confinement fusion (ICF) community as they can be used to bring dopants for diagnostics and nuclear physics experiments in direct contact with the deuterium-tritium (DT) fuel or to study new ignition regimes by enabling the formation of uniform liquid DT fuel layers. We developed a method to fabricate these foam-lined ablator shells using a prefabricated ablator as a mold to cast the foam liner within the shell. One crucial component of this new approach is the removal of solvent from the ablator shells without collapsing the ultralow-density porous polymer network. Here, we report on a supercritical drying approach with liquid carbon dioxide that provides critical information on how to produce thin layers of low-density polymer foams in ablator shells for ICF experiments. Diffusion experiments were used to study the time required for complete solvent exchange in 2-mm-inner-diameter diamond shells and the data were used to demonstrate the fabrication of uniform porous polymer films inside ablator shells.