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Conference Spotlight
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
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September 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2026
Latest News
Copper melting behavior at extreme temperatures could inform fusion materials
Using SLAC’s electron camera, researchers recorded timestamps of solid copper atoms (orange) as they melted (yellow) after being blasted with laser heat. This graphic shows how copper atoms changed over a period of several femtoseconds (millionths of a billionth of a second), notated here as fractions of a picosecond. Instead of the predicted collapse, the researchers saw a gradual melting. (Image: Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)
The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has announced researchers have conducted experiments testing how copper melts under extreme conditions, such as those it might be exposed to in a fusion machine. The results, published in Nature Communications, found that a copper thin film was more resilient to melting than models had predicted, uncovering molecular dynamics that had been missing from calculations.
“These results greatly improve the simulations we use to predict which materials have the best shot at surviving the extreme conditions of future fusion reaction chambers,” said Mianzhen Mo, the SLAC staff scientist who led the research.
Technical Session|Sponsored by MSTD
Wednesday, June 18, 2025|8:00–9:45AM CDT|Houston/Kansas City
Session Chair:
Simon Pimblott (INL)
Alternate Chair:
Jake R. Quincey (Oregon State)
Session Organizer:
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Impact of Thermal Reactor Radiation on Power Converter Circuit Performance
8:00–8:20AM CDT
Matthew M. Niichel (Purdue Univ.), Stylianos Chatzidakis (Purdue Univ.)
Paper
An Overview of Sodium Research at Oregon State University
8:20–8:40AM CDT
Jack Lewis (Oregon State), Guillaume P. Mignot (Oregon State)
Liquid Sodium In-Situ Mechanical Testing
8:40–9:00AM CDT
Andrew W. Canjar (Oregon State), Guillaume P. Mignot (Oregon State), Oden Armstrong (Oregon State)
Dynamic Strain Aging and Serrated Flow Behavior in FeCrAl Kanthal® APMT Alloy for Nuclear Cladding Applications
9:00–9:20AM CDT
Mahmoud Y. Hawary (NCSU), Abdullah S. Alomari (King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia), K. Linga Murty (NCSU)
Facility Design to Evaluate CRUD Deposition on ATF Cladding Material
9:20–9:40AM CDT
Matt G. Lindsay (Univ. Wisconsin, Madison), Tiago A. Moreira (Univ. Wisconsin, Madison), Mark H. Anderson (Univ. Wisconsin, Madison)
Presentation Slides (Visible to Attendees)
