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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Nuclear Dirigo
On April 22, 1959, Rear Admiral George J. King, superintendent of the Maine Maritime Academy, announced that following the completion of the 1960 training cruise, cadets would begin the study of nuclear engineering. Courses at that time included radiation physics, reactor control and instrumentation, reactor theory and engineering, thermodynamics, shielding, core design, reactor maintenance, and nuclear aspects.
Jiaqi Zhang, Akifumi Iwamoto, Keisuke Shigemori, Masanori Hara, Kohei Yamanoi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 80 | Number 3 | May 2024 | Pages 550-557
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2197810
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fuel pellets made of a solid deuterium-tritium (D-T) mixture are supplied for inertial confinement fusion. Characterization of the D-T mixture is fundamental for the design and production of high-quality fuel pellets. However, during the phase transition, isotopologue fractionation may lead to fractional crystallization in the solid phase of the hydrogen isotopologue mixture. If this phenomenon occurs in solid D-T fuel, it will reduce the reaction efficiency of nuclear fusion. Currently, there is no effective observation method for fractional crystallization. This study aims to quantify the degree of fractional crystallization of the hydrogen isotopologues mixture in the solid phase using the refractive index measurement. For this method, refractive index information on the hydrogen isotopologues is necessary, therefore the temperature and wavelength dependences of the refractive index of hydrogen isotopologues need to be measured. Then, using the refractive index distribution of the solid D-T will show the composition distribution of isotopologues for assessing the fractional crystallization. Particularly, as far as we know, this is the first time that the measured values of the refractive index versus wavelength of solid D2 have been obtained. Understanding the wavelength dependence of the refractive index for the dispersion compensation allows for a wider application of the fractionated crystallographic observation method.