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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Startup looks to commercialize inertial fusion energy
Another startup hoping to capitalize on progress the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has made in realizing inertial fusion energy has been launched. On August 27, San Francisco–based Inertia Enterprises, a private fusion power start-up, announced the formation of the company with the goal of commercializing fusion energy.
S. C. Wilson, S. R. Biegalski, R. L. Coats
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 157 | Number 3 | November 2007 | Pages 344-353
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE06-28
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The primary shutdown mechanism of all-metal nuclear assemblies engaging in pulsed operations is thermal expansion of the fuel material. Typically, a fuel temperature coefficient of reactivity is acquired by building the apparatus and fitting the operational data to the Nordheim-Fuchs kinetics equations. This value may vary as a function of reactivity insertion because of thermomechanical effects in the fuel material, which leads to uncertainty regarding untested reactor designs. This paper presents a computational method for modeling power, temperature, and thermoelastic displacement behavior of a spherical Godiva-like assembly during a prompt supercritical excursion and provides a way of determining fuel temperature coefficients of reactivity without the use of operational data.