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Second round of Launch Pad selections includes eight newcomers
The National Reactor Innovation Center at Idaho National Laboratory has announced 13 project selections across 12 companies for the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad, a Department of Energy–led program that integrates reactor and fuel facility authorization, testing, and deployment support for private nuclear developers.
The Launch Pad emerged from the Reactor Pilot Program and Fuel Line Pilot Program.
According to INL, projects selected include reactor development and nuclear fuel cycle advancements, including fabrication, enrichment, and conversion technologies.
D. Capelli, D. W. Schmidt, T. Cardenas, G. Rivera, R. B. Randolph, F. Fierro, E. C. Merritt, K. A. Flippo, F. W. Doss, J. L. Kline
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 70 | Number 2 | August-September 2016 | Pages 316-323
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST15-229
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The shear experiments are designed to investigate the transition to turbulence of the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability driven by counter-propagating shear flows. The shear targets for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) shear experiments consist of two hohlraums connected to both ends of a shock tube. The cylindrical shock tube is filled with two hemi-cylindrical CH foams separated by a metal tracer foil. On both ends, a thick gold half-moon–shaped D-plug is placed on opposite halves of the tube to create counter-propagating shock waves. The design is based on a smaller Omega shear target. While the basic NIF design has remained the same, details of the design have undergone several changes over the last 2 years and continue to evolve to improve the quality of the experimental results. Design changes include shock tube designs, tracer foil variations, transitioning to beryllium spool machining, and groove features inside of the tube. Details of how the targets are built including design, machining the parts, target assembly, and metrology are presented, as well as recent target developmental work to meet the needs of future experiments and to improve target assembly efficiency and accuracy.