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NextEra, Dominion to merge in major utilities announcement
NextEra Energy is set to acquire Dominion Energy, the two utilities announced earlier today in an approximately $67 billion merger that will alter the energy landscape—including for nuclear power—in the United States.
Brian D. Hehr, Ayman I. Hawari, Victor H. Gillette
Nuclear Technology | Volume 160 | Number 2 | November 2007 | Pages 251-256
Technical Paper | Materials for Nuclear Systems | doi.org/10.13182/NT07-A3897
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Graphite, a key structural and moderator material in the proposed Generation IV roadmap, is expected to experience irradiation at temperatures up to 1800 K. In this study, a molecular dynamics (MD) code is developed for the purpose of performing atomistic simulations of high-temperature graphite. The MD computations are benchmarked against thermal expansion and mean-squared displacement data, and modifications to the potential energy function are devised as needed to fit experimental measurements. Graphite-specific alterations include a plane-by-plane center-of-mass velocity correction, anisotropy in the potential energy cutoff function, and temperature-dependent parameterization of the interatomic potential. The refined MD model is then employed to investigate the threshold displacement energy at temperatures of 300 and 1800 K. It was found that the threshold displacement energy depends strongly on the knock-on direction, yet the angle-averaged threshold energy exhibits relatively little variation with temperature.