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2026 Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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Latest News
INL makes first fuel for Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment
Idaho National Laboratory has announced the creation of the first batch of enriched uranium chloride fuel salt for the Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment (MCRE). INL said that its fuel production team delivered the first fuel salt batch at the end of September, and it intends to produce four additional batches by March 2026. MCRE will require a total of 72–75 batches of fuel salt for the reactor to go critical.
James A. Blink, William G. Hoover
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 8 | Number 1 | July 1985 | Pages 1844-1849
Inertial Confinement Fusion Reactor | Proceedings of the Sixth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (San Francisco, California, March 3-7, 1985) | doi.org/10.13182/FST85-A40029
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fragmentation of free liquids in Inertial Confinement Fusion reactors could determine the upper bound on reactor pulse rate because increased surface area will enhance the cooling and condensation of coolant ablated by the fusion x rays. Relaxation from the suddenly (neutron) heated state will move a liquid into the negative pressure region under the liquid-vapor P-V dome. The resulting expansion in a diverging geometry will hydrodynamically force the liquid to fragment, with vapor then forming from the new surfaces to fill the cavities. An energy minimization model is used to determine the fragment size that produces the least amount of non-fragment-center-of-mass energy; i.e., the sum of the surface and dilational kinetic energies. This model predicts fragmentation dependence on original system size and amount of isochoric heating as well as liquid density, Grüneisen parameter, surface tension, and sound speed. A two dimensional molecular dynamics code was developed to test the model at a microscopic scale for the Lennard-Jones fluid with its two adjustable constants chosen to represent lithium. The numerical experiments produced reasonable agreement with the model. Considerable fragmentation is predicted in the high energy density HYLIFE reactor, with minimum fragmentation in other (low energy density) reactors.