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Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
R.B Stephens, S.W. Haan, D.C. Wilson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 3 | May 2002 | Pages 226-233
Technical Paper | Fourteenth Target Fabrication Specialists' Meeting | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A17904
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Successful ignition in NIF will require targets that meet stringent standards as to symmetry, composition, and dimensions. We describe here the current understanding of specifications for baseline indirect drive targets of each of the three types of ablators: beryllium, polyimide, and plasma polymer. These specifications include the range of values for all targets of each group, and the variation in value allowed in a specific target of that group. They cover all of the components which make up a target, and which are critical to an implosion: the hohlraum and its components — windows, capsule support foil and gas fill — and the shell and its DT ice layer. These specifications are preliminary and incomplete; they will necessarily evolve with design details and with increasing understanding of target dynamics. They are compiled here as a reference for the ICF community and a basis on which to plan future work: to fill in the gaps and to develop thenecessary characterization techniques. Future work will also include the requirements for direct drive targets.