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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
October 2026
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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 THD
Tuesday, June 17, 2025|10:00–11:45AM CDT|Lincolnshire 1/2
Session Chair:
Donna Guillen (INL)
Alternate Chair:
Saya Lee (Penn State)
To access paper attachments, you must be logged in and registered for the meeting.
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Modeling the Oregon State University's High Temperature Test Facility via a Porous Media Approach
10:00–10:20AM CDT
Ismail Bouarich (INL), Lise Charlot (INL), Mauricio E. Tano Retamales (INL)
Presented by Guillaume Guidicelli (INL)
Paper
Benchmarking the OSU HTTF to StarCCM+
10:20–10:40AM CDT
Benjamin Nakhnikian-Weintraub (Oregon State), Izabela Gutowska (Oregon State)
Preliminary CFD Results of the Lower Plenum Mixing Test of the High Temperature Test Facility Benchmark
10:40–11:00AM CDT
Mohammed Muaaz M. Hussain (NRG PALLAS), Ferry Roelofs (NRG PALLAS)
Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) High-Temperature Test Facility (HTTF) Thermal-Hydraulics Benchmark: Error Scaling Exercise
11:00–11:20AM CDT
Aaron S. Epiney (INL), Ramon K. Yoshiura (INL), Mohammad G. Abdo (INL), Robert Kile (INL)
Progress Towards Validating a New RELAP5-3D Model of the High Temperature Test Facility
11:20–11:40AM CDT
Jonathan L. Barthle (Univ. Tennessee, Knoxville), Aaron S. Epiney (INL), Robert Kile (INL)
