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60 Years of U: Perspectives on resources, demand, and the evolving role of nuclear energy
Recent years have seen growing global interest in nuclear energy and rising confidence in the sector. For the first time since the early 2000s, there is renewed optimism about the industry’s future. This change is driven by several major factors: geopolitical developments that highlight the need for secure energy supplies, a stronger focus on resilient energy systems, national commitments to decarbonization, and rising demand for clean and reliable electricity.
Suhas Bhandarkar, Jacob Betcher, Ryan Smith, Bruce Lairson, Travis Ayers
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 70 | Number 2 | August-September 2016 | Pages 332-340
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST15-218
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Targets for inertial confinement fusion shots on the National Ignition Facility typically use thin polyimide films, ~500 nm, with a coating of 25 nm of aluminum as windows that seal the laser entrance hole. Their role is to contain the hohlraum gas and minimize the extraneous infrared radiation getting in. This is necessary to control precisely the hohlraum thermal environment for layering inside the capsule with solid deuterium-tritium at 18 K. Here, we use our empirical data on the bulging behavior of these foils under various different conditions to develop models to capture the complex viscoelastic behavior of these films at both room and cryogenic temperatures. The constitutive equations derived from these models give us the ability to quantitatively specify the film’s behavior during the fielding of these targets and set the best parameters for new target designs.