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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
Copper melting behavior at extreme temperatures could inform fusion materials
Using SLAC’s electron camera, researchers recorded timestamps of solid copper atoms (orange) as they melted (yellow) after being blasted with laser heat. This graphic shows how copper atoms changed over a period of several femtoseconds (millionths of a billionth of a second), notated here as fractions of a picosecond. Instead of the predicted collapse, the researchers saw a gradual melting. (Image: Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)
The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has announced researchers have conducted experiments testing how copper melts under extreme conditions, such as those it might be exposed to in a fusion machine. The results, published in Nature Communications, found that a copper thin film was more resilient to melting than models had predicted, uncovering molecular dynamics that had been missing from calculations.
“These results greatly improve the simulations we use to predict which materials have the best shot at surviving the extreme conditions of future fusion reaction chambers,” said Mianzhen Mo, the SLAC staff scientist who led the research.
1:00–2:45PM MDT
Room 3|Advanced Reactors
Session Chair: Piyush Sabharwall
Room 4|Fusion
Session Chair: Chase N. Taylor
Room 5|Lightning Talks
Session Chair: Dawn M. Scates
Room 1|Net Zero Nuclear
Session Chair: Jhansi Kandasamy
3:15–5:00PM MDT
Room 4|Advanced Reactors
Session Chair: James A. King
Session Chair: Trishelle Marie Copeland-Johnson
Room 1|Modeling and Simulation
Session Chair: Taek K. Kim
Panel|Room 3|Panels
Session Chair: Mackenzie L. Gorham
Panel|Room 3|Fuel Cycle|Panels
Session Chair: Pierre-Clement A. Simon
Session Chair: Ling Zou
Session Chair: Ahmad Y. Al Rashdan
Room 4|Nuclear Energy Justice
Session Chair: Mustafa Mashal
Room 3|Fuel Cycle
Session Chair: Kenneth C. Marsden
Session Chair: Emily A. Nichols
Session Chair: Kevin Han
Room 4|Safety, Security, and Regulatory Compliance
Session Chair: Chandrakanth Bolisetti
8:00–9:45AM MDT
Room 1|Economics
Session Chair: Nicolas E. Stauff
Session Chair: Abdul Dulloo
Panel|Room 3|Panels|Modeling and Simulation
Session Chair: George Mesina|Alternate Chair: Robert Kile
Session Chair: Marissa G. Bailey
10:15AM–12:00PM MDT
Room 4|Emerging Topics
Session Chair: Simon M. Pimblott
Room 1|Lightning Talks
Session Chair: Thomas Folk
Session Chair: Michael J. Moorehead
