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Kentucky disburses $10M in nuclear grants
The Kentucky Nuclear Energy Development Authority (KNEDA) recently distributed its first awards through the new Nuclear Energy Development Grant Program, which was established last year. In total, KNEDA disbursed $10 million to a variety of companies that will use the funding to support siting studies, enrichment supply-chain planning, workforce training, and curriculum development.
Brian D. Hehr, Ayman I. Hawari, Victor H. Gillette
Nuclear Technology | Volume 160 | Number 2 | November 2007 | Pages 251-256
Technical Paper | Materials for Nuclear Systems | doi.org/10.13182/NT07-A3897
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Graphite, a key structural and moderator material in the proposed Generation IV roadmap, is expected to experience irradiation at temperatures up to 1800 K. In this study, a molecular dynamics (MD) code is developed for the purpose of performing atomistic simulations of high-temperature graphite. The MD computations are benchmarked against thermal expansion and mean-squared displacement data, and modifications to the potential energy function are devised as needed to fit experimental measurements. Graphite-specific alterations include a plane-by-plane center-of-mass velocity correction, anisotropy in the potential energy cutoff function, and temperature-dependent parameterization of the interatomic potential. The refined MD model is then employed to investigate the threshold displacement energy at temperatures of 300 and 1800 K. It was found that the threshold displacement energy depends strongly on the knock-on direction, yet the angle-averaged threshold energy exhibits relatively little variation with temperature.