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Pacific Fusion pulsed-power facility to host external users
Concept art of Pacific Fusion’s demonstration system. (Image: Pacific Fusion)
Pacific Fusion is preparing to start construction on a pulsed-power inertial fusion facility in New Mexico, and today the company announced it is seeking expressions of interest from researchers in industry, academia, and government who may want to run experiments at the facility.
L. Chen, W. Zhao, G. Zhong, C. Watts, James P. Gunn, X. Liu, Y. Lian, DLP Team
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 73 | Number 4 | May 2018 | Pages 568-578
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1415614
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The thermal performance of the divertor Langmuir probe conceptual design developed for the ITER divertor, which consists of a shielded probe bolted to a copper heat sink, has been predicted by the finite element analysis package ANSYS to have a high risk of damage due to poor heat transfer ability. In order to mitigate this risk, three alternative designs focusing on improving heat conduction have been proposed, and the power-handling abilities, damage risk, and interface challenges of the three designs have been compared. First simulation results indicate that a design involving casting a tungsten probe sensor into a copper heat sink could provide adequate heat-handling capacity. Elasto-plastic stress analysis will be needed to evaluate the thermal stresses at W/Cu interface in our future work. Langmuir probe prototypes will be prepared and high heat flux tests will be performed on electron beam facilities at the Southwestern Institute of Physics to verify the probe functionality once analysis has identified a suitable candidate design.