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The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
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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
Gennadij T. Razdobarin, Gianfranco Federici, Vladimir M. Kozhevin, Eugeny E. Mukhin, Vladimir V. Semenov, Sergey Yu. Tolstyakov
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 1 | January 2002 | Pages 32-43
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A198
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A technique based on laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy is proposed for detecting in situ dust on the plasma-exposed surfaces and in the grooves of plasma-facing components in the next generation of fusion devices (e.g., ITER). It is based on laser-induced ablation of wall material and spectral analysis of the laser spark flash-light collected by imaging optics and transmitted to the detection system. This could give space- and time-resolved information on the presence of dust or loosely bound films, their characteristic deposition patterns, elemental composition, and possibly their hydrogen content, without the necessity of breaking the machine vacuum. We have performed some simple proof-of-principle experiments to demonstrate the suitability of this technique, which might provide an effective nonintrusive in situ surface analysis method for surveying in-vessel dust accumulation in future fusion devices. The preliminary results are discussed, and some of the inherent advantages and difficulties of this method are highlighted. The usefulness of this technique to provide reliable information on the quantity of dust at the probed location still depends on the resolution of several aspects, which are the subject of ongoing experimental investigation. Areas of further research and development are identified, and some of the design issues to integrate this system in a next-step fusion device such as ITER are briefly discussed.