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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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NN Asks: What did you learn from ANS’s Nuclear 101?
Mike Harkin
When ANS first announced its new Nuclear 101 certificate course, I was excited. This felt like a course tailor-made for me, a transplant into the commercial nuclear world. I enrolled for the inaugural session held in November 2024, knowing it was going to be hard (this is nuclear power, of course)—but I had been working on ramping up my knowledge base for the past year, through both my employer and at a local college.
The course was a fast-and-furious roller-coaster ride through all the key components of the nuclear power industry, in one highly challenging week. In fact, the challenges the students experienced caught even the instructors by surprise. Thankfully, the shared intellectual stretch we students all felt helped us band together to push through to the end.
We were all impressed with the quality of the instructors, who are some of the top experts in the field. We appreciated not only their knowledge base but their support whenever someone struggled to understand a concept.
A. Litnovsky, M. Matveeva, D. L. Rudakov, C. P. Chrobak, S. L. Allen, A. W. Leonard, P. L. Taylor, C. P. C. Wong, B. W. N. Fitzpatrick, J. W. Davis, A. A. Haasz, P. C. Stangeby, U. Breuer, V. Philipps, S. Möller
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 62 | Number 1 | July-August 2012 | Pages 97-103
Diagnostics | Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Fusion Reactor Materials, Part A: Fusion Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A14119
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Thermo-oxidation is controlled exposure in an oxygen-containing atmosphere at elevated temperature and is being considered as a technique for the de-tritiation of carbon-based codeposits in ITER. In addition, unplanned oxidation may also occur during accidental air ingress. The impact of thermo-oxidation on ITER diagnostic mirrors causes concerns. A dedicated study was performed in DIII-D, where molybdenum and copper mirrors were installed in the main chamber, in the divertor, and at a location remote from the plasma and exposed for [approximately]2 hours to a mixture containing 80% helium and 20% oxygen at a total pressure of 1.27 kPa. Mirrors in the main chamber and in the divertor were exposed at 350°C to 360°C whereas the temperature of mirrors in the remote area was [approximately]160°C.Reflectivity of all mirrors was degraded after thermo-oxidation showing a decrease in the UV range from 60% to 10% for molybdenum mirrors and a 90% drop for copper mirrors at the wavelength 250 nm. The reflectivity of mirrors exposed at lower temperature was less degraded. Surface analyses revealed formation of oxides on all mirrors.In ITER, shutters planned for mirror protection are ineffective against thermo-oxidation. Nevertheless, in-situ cleaning systems planned for ITER mirrors may efficiently remove oxide layers.
