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Latest News
Playing the “bad guy” to enhance next-generation safety
Sometimes, cops and robbers is more than just a kid’s game. At the Department of Energy’s national laboratories, researchers are channeling their inner saboteurs to discover vulnerabilities in next-generation nuclear reactors, making sure that they’re as safe as possible before they’re even constructed.
Y. T. Lee, A. Q. L. Nguyen, H. Huang, K. A. Moreno, K. C. Chen, C. Chen, M. A. Johnson, J. D. Hughes, R. C. Montesanti, D. W. Phillion
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 55 | Number 4 | May 2009 | Pages 405-410
Technical Paper | Eighteenth Target Fabrication Specialists' Meeting | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-28
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A phase-shifting diffraction interferometer provides full surface mapping of National Ignition Facility (NIF) ablator capsules for surface finish and isolated defects. To integrate this new instrument into the NIF metrology work flow, the measurement must be both quick and accurate. In this work, we developed automated processing algorithms to streamline a large number of manual steps. This enables the process time to be reduced from 1½ days to 2 h per shell, thus meeting the NIF throughput requirement of 20 capsules/week. We also developed methods to quantitatively report the isolated defects and surface roughness in formats that can be benchmarked against the NIF specifications.