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A year in orbit: ISS deployment tests radiation detectors for future space missions
The predawn darkness on a cool Florida night was shattered by the ignition of nine Merlin engines on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The thrust of the engines shook the ground miles away. From a distance, the rocket appeared to slowly rise above the horizon. For the cargo onboard, the launch was anything but gentle, as the ignition of liquid oxygen generated more than 1.5 million pounds of force. After the rocket had been out of sight for several minutes, the booster dramatically returned to Earth with several sonic booms in a captivating show of engineering designed to make space travel less expensive and more sustainable.
Richard F. Mattas
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 19 | Number 3 | May 1991 | Pages 1487-1492
ITER | Proceedings of the Ninth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Oak Brook, Illinois, October 7-11, 1990) | doi.org/10.13182/FST91-A29551
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The performance of the ITER first wall and divertor have been analyzed using the Fusion Lifetime Prediction (FLIP) code. The code is a one-dimensional finite difference code which calculates the changes in properties, stress, strain, and temperature overtime for plate structures. The results indicate that the first wall should be able to accommodate up to ∼0.6 MW/m2 heat flux for the reference operating conditions. At much higher levels, fatigue and cracking are predicted to lead to rapid failure. The loss of ductility in irradiated austenitic stainless steel at low temperatures is a concern which may limit operating life. The results of the divertor analysis show that a bare, 2 mm thick plate of Nb-1Zr or TZM can accommodate fluxes of 15–20 MW/m2 for the ITER conditions. Duplex structures composed of 2 mm of tungsten on 2mm of Nb-1Zr or TZM are limited to 8–10 MW/m2.