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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
High-temperature plumbing and advanced reactors
The use of nuclear fission power and its role in impacting climate change is hotly debated. Fission advocates argue that short-term solutions would involve the rapid deployment of Gen III+ nuclear reactors, like Vogtle-3 and -4, while long-term climate change impact would rely on the creation and implementation of Gen IV reactors, “inherently safe” reactors that use passive laws of physics and chemistry rather than active controls such as valves and pumps to operate safely. While Gen IV reactors vary in many ways, one thing unites nearly all of them: the use of exotic, high-temperature coolants. These fluids, like molten salts and liquid metals, can enable reactor engineers to design much safer nuclear reactors—ultimately because the boiling point of each fluid is extremely high. Fluids that remain liquid over large temperature ranges can provide good heat transfer through many demanding conditions, all with minimal pressurization. Although the most apparent use for these fluids is advanced fission power, they have the potential to be applied to other power generation sources such as fusion, thermal storage, solar, or high-temperature process heat.1–3
Keiji Nagai, Takayoshi Norimatsu, Noriaki Miyanaga, Tatsuhiko Yamanaka
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 3 | May 2002 | Pages 257-260
Technical Paper | Fourteenth Target Fabrication Specialists' Meeting | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A17910
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper describes a possibility to control of laser ablation using material functionality. As an example, a remarkable difference is shown in the laser ablation of a polystyrene film coated with a photovoltaic perylene/phthalocyanine bilayer when compared with a bare polystyrene film after irradiation at an intensity range of 109 ∼ 1010W/cm2 (λ=1064 nm, 1.1-ns FWHM). Without the bilayer coating, the laser pulse formed spiky structures in the polystyrene film as self-focusing traces of the laser pulse, while for the coated film, the uniform surface ablation trace without the spiky interior structures was observed. The phenomena in the presence of the organic photovoltaic coating material agree with the required ablation to achieve high-density compression of the fuel capsule for inertial fusion energy.
