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Conference Spotlight
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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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|Reactor Physics
Saturday, April 6, 2024|1:35–2:55PM EDT|Hosler Room 026
Session Chair:
Katheren R. Bosson Nantes (Penn State University)
Alternate Chair:
Jacob Maxeiner (Penn State University)
Session Organizer:
Jonathan Balog (Penn State University)
To access paper attachments, you must be logged in and registered for the meeting.
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A Novel Stationary Molten Salt Reactor Design for Spent Nuclear Fuel Burning
1:35–1:55PM EDT
Justin P. Shurie (Virginia Commonwealth Univ.), Robert Krushelnisky (Virginia Commonwealth Univ.), Caleb T. King (Virginia Commonwealth Univ.), William E. Strom (Virginia Commonwealth Univ.), Zeyun Wu (Virginia Commonwealth Univ.)
Paper
Neutronics Benchmark Studies on the Hallam Nuclear Power Facility (HNPF) First Core Loading
1:55–2:15PM EDT
Justin P. Shurie (Virginia Commonwealth Univ.), Zeyun Wu (Virginia Commonwealth Univ.)
Use of Bilinear Interpolation with the Fission Matrix Method for the Molten Salt Fast Reactor
2:15–2:35PM EDT
Maximiliano Dalinger (Penn State), Elia Merzari (Penn State), William J. Walters (Penn State), Saya Lee (Penn State)
Coupled Multiphysics Modeling of the Kilowatt Reactor Using Stirling TechnologY (KRUSTY)
2:35–2:55PM EDT
Mahmoud Eltawila (Univ. Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), April J. Novak (Univ. Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
