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Conference Spotlight
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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Fusion Science and Technology
August 2026
Latest News
Second round of Launch Pad selections includes eight newcomers
The National Reactor Innovation Center at Idaho National Laboratory has announced 13 project selections across 12 companies for the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad, a Department of Energy–led program that integrates reactor and fuel facility authorization, testing, and deployment support for private nuclear developers.
The Launch Pad emerged from the Reactor Pilot Program and Fuel Line Pilot Program.
According to INL, projects selected include reactor development and nuclear fuel cycle advancements, including fabrication, enrichment, and conversion technologies.
Widianto P. Moestopo, Jean-Baptiste Forien, James D. Sater, Timothy R. Prisk, Travis M. Briggs, G. Elijah Kemp, Derek A. Mariscal, Montu Sharma, Claudia Shuldberg, Jay Crippen, Stephan A. MacLaren, Xiaoxing Xia, James S. Oakdale
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 82 | Number 5 | July 2026 | Pages 1069-1080
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2025.2605605
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the pursuit of realizing reliable clean energy generation via inertial confinement fusion (ICF), wetted foam (WF) capsule targets have long been coveted due to their potential to simplify the target fielding process and suppress hydrodynamic instabilities and material mixing that limit achievable energy output, yet producing and deploying a WF target has proven challenging. In this work, we demonstrate the design, fabrication, metrology, and testing of fully additively manufactured (AM) foam-lined capsules using two-photon polymerization (2PP) for ICF. We successfully fielded an AM polymeric foam capsule with a 3-mm outer diameter, a nominally 15-µm-thick solid outer layer, a 120-µm-thick inner foam layer, and a 250-µm outer diameter copper fill tube on the National Ignition Facility for a polar direct-drive shot, and we showcase deuterium wetting of the capsule foam layer inside an ignition target proofing station. Our exploration showed that 2PP can produce fieldable targets with complex geometries and potentially shorten the design iteration turnaround time and the overall target fabrication time.