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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Deep geologic repository progress—2025 Update
Editor's note: This article has was originally published in November 2023. It has been updated with new information as of June 2025.
Outside my office, there is a display case filled with rock samples from all over the world. It contains a disk of translucent, orange salt from the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.; a core of white-and-bronze gneiss from the site of the future deep geologic repository in Eurajoki, Finland; several angular chunks of fine-grained, gray claystone from the underground research laboratory at Bure, France; and a piece of coarse-grained granite from the underground research tunnel in Daejeon, South Korea.
Mazhyn Skakov, Gainiya Zhanbolatova, Arman Miniyazov, Timur Tulenbergenov, Igor Sokolov, Yerzhan Sapatayev, Yernat Kozhakhmetov, Olga Bukina
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 77 | Number 1 | January 2021 | Pages 57-66
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2020.1843885
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents the results of a study on impact of high-power heat load and tungsten (W) surface carbidization on its structural-phase composition and physical-mechanical properties. In this regard, carbidization of a W surface was carried out by means of beam-plasma discharge in a simulation machine with plasma-beam installation. Certain data were obtained regarding temperature in control points of studied samples and temperature distribution throughout the monoblock element, made as a rectangle with an orifice for a cooling path, placed in a fusion reactor divertor. The paper demonstrates that changes in heat load power have an impact on microhardness, roughness, atomization of the carbidized W surface, and phase formation processes. It was established that a heat load q = 10 MW/m2 has very little effect on the elemental composition of the surface and structural-phase composition of W samples with a carbidized layer. Growth of thermal load up to q = 20 MW/m2 leads to a noticeable transformation of tungsten monocarbide (WC) into tungsten semicarbide (W2C) and cracking of the W sample surface.