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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
3D Printing Possibilities: Additive Manufacturing Impact Limiters for Transportation Casks
With the significant advances in additive manufacturing (AM), otherwise known as 3D printing, Orano Federal Services and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte recently re-examined the capabilities to print impact limiters for transportation casks used to ship spent nuclear fuel. Impact limiters protect transportation casks (sometimes also referred to as transportation overpacks) and their contents during an accident. Impact limiter designs must withstand testing based on a certain significance level of hypothetical accidents, including drops, crushing, fires, and immersion in water.
S. Keniley, D. Curreli
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 1 | January 2017 | Pages 93-102
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST16-117
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We present an innovative coupled Boltzmann–binary collision approximation (BCA) method for the simulation of the near-wall plasma in the presence of a material-releasing wall. The method is based on a full-f multispecies Boltzmann solver for the plasma (charged and neutral species) coupled to a modification of the classical BCA code TRIDYN. Both the plasma ions and the impurities are treated as Boltzmann kinetic species, allowing high resolution even at very disparate densities, particle fluxes, drift velocities, and energy fluxes. From the distribution functions, all the fluid moments (density, heat flux, etc.) and the net and gross erosion rates are derived. An example of calculation of a helium plasma facing a beryllium wall is reported, showing the evolution of the phase-spaces of ions, neutrals, and material impurities in the near-wall region at nominal ITER conditions.