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November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Latest News
OECD NEA meeting focuses on irradiation experiments
Members of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency’s Second Framework for Irradiation Experiments (FIDES-II) joint undertaking gathered from September 29 to October 3 in Ketchum, Idaho, for the technical advisory group and governing board meetings hosted by Idaho National Laboratory. The FIDES-II Framework aims to ensure and foster competences in experimental nuclear fuel and structural materials in-reactor experiments through a diverse set of Joint Experimental Programs (JEEPs).
G. D. Samolyuk, Y. N. Osetsky, R. E. Stoller
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 1 | January 2017 | Pages 52-59
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST16-118
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tungsten and its alloys are the primary candidate materials for plasma-facing components in fusion reactors. The material is exposed to high-energy neutrons and the high flux of helium and hydrogen atoms. In this work we have studied the properties of vacancy clusters and their interaction with H and He in W using density functional theory. Convergence of calculations with respect to modeling cell size was investigated. It is demonstrated that vacancy cluster formation energy converges with small cells with a size of 6 × 6 × 6 (432 lattice sites) enough to consider a microvoid of up to six vacancies with high accuracy. Most of the vacancy clusters containing fewer than six vacancies are unstable. Introducing He or H atoms increases their binding energy potentially making gas-filled bubbles stable. According to the results of the calculations, the H2 molecule is unstable in clusters containing six or fewer vacancies.