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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.
8:00–9:45AM EST
Georgetown West
Session Chair: Kimberly Anderson|Alternate Chair: Stefani Buster
10:15AM–12:00PM EST
Session Chair: Camille Palmer|Alternate Chair: Claudio Gariazzo
1:00–2:45PM EST
Session Chair: Lloyd Jollay|Alternate Chair: Jim Behrens
3:15–5:00PM EST
Session Chair: Brian Raines|Alternate Chair: Chris E. Robinson
Lincoln East
Session Chair: Sunil S. Chirayath|Alternate Chair: Manit D. Shah
Session Chair: Manit D. Shah|Alternate Chair: Sunil S. Chirayath
Panel|Lincoln East
Session Chair: Haori Yang|Alternate Chair: Chris E. Robinson
Session Chair: Madeline Lockhart|Alternate Chair: Maggie Arno
