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Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Kunioki Mima, T. Takeda, FIREX Project Group
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 49 | Number 3 | April 2006 | Pages 358-366
Technical Paper | Fast Ignition | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1154
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper introduces the next generation of fast ignition research facilities now under construction and describes in detail the Japanese project Fast Ignition Realization Experiment (FIREX-I) and its proposed follow-up, FIREX-II. Both the facilities and their scientific objectives are presented. FIREX-I and the other two facilities described in subsequent papers - OMEGA EP at the University of Rochester and the Z-Petawatt at Sandia National Laboratories - will conduct proof-of-principle experiments for the fast ignitor concept. The facilities consist of two components: a long-pulse ( > ns) driver capable of compressing and assembling the fusion fuel and a separate petawatt-class laser for heating. For the FIREX project, the present status of the construction of the 10-kJ-level, high-energy petawatt Laser for Fusion Experiment is reported, and the theoretical basis for high-density plasma heating with an ~10-kJ, 10-ps petawatt laser is discussed to show how this heating pulse is predicted to achieve the plasma parameters required for the fast ignition. The required petawatt spot size, the tolerable carbon fraction in the proposed D-T-loaded foam cryogenic target, appropriate heating laser pulse shape, and the required electron stopping range are explored. The theoretical analysis includes the use of Fokker-Planck simulation to describe the heating of the dense plasma by relativistic electrons created in the petawatt laser-plasma interactions. This modeling indicates that if 30% of the 10-kJ petawatt laser energy is coupled by relativistic electrons into D-T plasmas compressed to 100 to 200 g/cm3, the plasmas will be subsequently heated to 5 keV and fusion gains, defined as fusion energy produced divided by the total incident (compression and heating) laser energy, as high as 0.1 can result.