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Task force charts growing interest in civilian maritime nuclear applications
Readers of Nuclear News will have heard of historical applications of civilian maritime nuclear power, like the merchant ship NS Savannah and the USS Sturgis floating power plant. With a few exceptions there has been little action in this area for over 50 years, and there are plenty of reasons and opinions as to why, but over the last few years the dramatic increase in interest from the maritime industry and its stakeholders has been undeniable.
C. H. Skinner, C. A. Gentile, R. Doerner
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 1 | July 2013 | Pages 1-7
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-A17041
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Practical methods to clean ITER's diagnostic mirrors will be essential to ITER's plasma operations. We report on laser cleaning of candidate ITER single-crystal molybdenum mirrors that were plasma coated with either carbon or beryllium films 150 to 420 nm thick. A pulsed Nd laser beam was focused to 1 to 2 J/cm2 and scanned at various speeds across the surface of a mirror. The cleaning effect was measured with a novel method that combined microscopic imaging and reflectivity measurements in the red, green, and blue spectral regions and at the H-alpha and H-beta wavelengths. No damage of the molybdenum mirror substrates was observed at the range of laser intensities used. For carbon-coated mirrors, complete removal of the film and restoration of the reflectivity were measured in some conditions. For the beryllium-coated mirrors, restoration of reflectivity has so far been incomplete. Heat transfer calculations suggest a shorter, [approximately]5-ns laser pulse would be optimal.