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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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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|Nonproliferation, Security, and Safeguards
Saturday, April 6, 2024|10:15–11:35AM EDT|Leonhard Building Room 102
Session Chair:
Aaron P. Fjeldsted (Penn State University)
Alternate Chair:
Chris Balbier (Penn State University)
Session Organizer:
Jonathan B. Balog (Penn State University)
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A History of Nuclear Treaties and Verification Methods
10:15–10:35AM EDT
Tanner Heatherly (Oregon State), Camille Palmer (Oregon State)
Paper
Nuclear Wargaming
10:35–10:55AM EDT
David Darlington (U.S. Military Academy), Tyler Erwin (U.S. Military Academy), Erick Lara (U.S. Military Academy), Michael O'Connor (U.S. Military Academy)
Laser-Driven X-Ray Source Array Design for Nuclear Weapons Effects Testing
10:55–11:15AM EDT
Roberto E. Lopez (U.S. Military Academy), Owen X. Koster (U.S. Military Academy), Joshua Santina (U.S. Military Academy), Ryan A. Brockington (U.S. Military Academy)
Predicting Compositions of Mixed-Type Simulated Nuclear Explosions from Fallout Activity Using Inverse Gaussian Process Regressor Modeling
11:15–11:35AM EDT
Ryan M. Mott (NCSU)
