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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.
M.A. Bourham, J.G. Gilligan
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 26 | Number 3 | November 1994 | Pages 517-521
Fusion Material and Plasma-Facing Component | Proceedings of the Eleventh Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy New Orleans, Louisiana June 19-23, 1994 | doi.org/10.13182/FST94-A40209
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The NCSU electrothermal plasma gun, SIRENS, has been used to evaluate the erosion behavior of plasma-facing components under conditions simulating plasma disruption in tokamaks. The device is capable of producing conditions with heat fluence up to 10 MJ/m2 over 0.1 and 0.25 ms pulse duration. In future large tokamaks, plasma-facing components are expected to receive heat fluxes during a plasma disruption, which may exceed 100 GW/m2 over 0.01–5 ms. The vapor, which is developed at the ablating surface, absorbs a fraction of the incoming plasma energy. Candidate plasma-facing materials have been exposed to heat fluxes in the SIRENS facility (primarily from a blackbody spectrum photons), up to 100 GW/m2 over 0.1–0.25 ms. The vapor shielding effect has been demonstrated and analyzed for the divertor candidate materials.
