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The Mission of the Robotics and Remote Systems Division is to promote the development and application of immersive simulation, robotics, and remote systems for hazardous environments for the purpose of reducing hazardous exposure to individuals, reducing environmental hazards and reducing the cost of performing work.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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Latest News
Lightbridge announces first U-Zr fuel rod samples extruded at INL
Lightbridge Corporation announced today that it has reached “a critical milestone” in the development of its extruded solid fuel technology. Coupon samples using an alloy of zirconium and depleted uranium—not the high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) that Lightbridge plans to use to manufacture its fuel for the commercial market—were extruded at Idaho National Laboratory’s Materials and Fuels Complex.
James P. Blanchard, Carl J. Martin
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 3 | April 2005 | Pages 585-590
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Inertial Fusion Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A749
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The first wall of a laser fusion chamber will experience high heat loads pulsed at 5-10 Hz with pulse widths on the order of a few microseconds. This poses a challenging problem for dry wall designs, as the wall will be susceptible to a variety of failure modes. The primary design concept of the High Average Power Laser (HAPL) project is a ferritic steel first wall coated with tungsten armor. Due to the extreme heat loads, the armor will experience high temperatures, extensive yielding, and surface cracking. In order to evaluate the ability of this design to provide a suitable lifetime, a series of experiments to simulate chamber conditions using ions, x-rays, infrared heating, and lasers is under way. These experimental efforts have been coupled with numerical modeling to help determine likely failure modes and establish design criteria for chambers. This paper compares models for the thermomechanical effects seen in the tests to those expected in a full power chamber, in order to assess the ability of the tests to mimic the actual chamber performance. The tests are found to have some limitations, but they still offer excellent approximations of the true behavior.