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Deep Fission raises $30M in financing
Since the Department of Energy kicked off a 10-company race with its Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program to bring test reactors on line by July 4, 2026, the industry has been waiting for new headlines proclaiming progress. Aalo Atomics broke ahead of the pack first by announcing last week that it had broken ground on its 50-MWe Aalo-X at Idaho National Laboratory.
A. Nikroo, J.M. Pontelandolfo, E.R. Castillo
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 3 | May 2002 | Pages 220-225
Technical Paper | Fourteenth Target Fabrication Specialists' Meeting | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A17903
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Targets for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) need to be about 200 μm thick and 2 mm in diameter. These dimensions are well beyond those currently fabricated on a routine basis. We have investigated fabrication of near NIF scale targets using the depolymerizable mandrel technique. Poly-alpha-methylstyrene (PAMS) mandrels, about 2 mm in diameter, of varying qualities were coated with as much as 125 μm of glow discharge polymer (GDP). The surface finish of the final shells was examined using a variety of techniques. A clear dependence of the modal spectrum of final GDP shell on the quality of the initial PAMS mandrels was observed. Isolated features were found to be the greatest cause for a shell not meeting the NIF standard.
