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Conference Spotlight
2026 Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Star Trek or Planet of the Apes?
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
These days, the ship of civil nuclear technology we are all aboard is sailing through a turbulent passage. The winds and currents are favorable, but there are swells ahead: steep energy-demand projections, buoyant equity valuations, splashy announcements, a generational realignment of nuclear policies and institutional norms.
Part of the reason we chose “Building the Nuclear Century” as the theme for this year’s Winter Conference was to put some ballast in the hull of the nuclear conversation.
Advanced nuclear fission and fusion energy development are accelerating, both here and around the world. And yet, at least in the U.S., we are still years away from connecting commercial Gen IV systems to our grid.
In a world growing increasingly impatient, how do we stay on task and deliver? There are three ingredients to success.
Yansong Liu, Taimin Yi, Kai Wang, Xiaobo Qi, Zhibing He
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 77 | Number 6 | August 2021 | Pages 454-462
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2021.1927622
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In indirect-drive inertial confinement fusion, thin films on laser entrance hole (LEH) windows are needed to reflect thermal infrared radiation (IR) and to protect the deuterium-tritium (D-T) cryogenic shell. In this paper, a set of ultrathin aluminum films deposited on freestanding polyimide as LEH windows were studied on optical properties in the IR band. The influences of thickness and gas pressure on the IR transmittivity of these films were examined. It was found that gas pressure plays an important role in the IR transmission and microstructure changes of LEH films because of elastic modulus mismatch between aluminum and polymide. It is undoubted that the aluminum/polymide film can block thermal IR and protect the D-T cryogenic shell when gas pressure is less than 20 KPa.
