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Hash Hashemianpresident@ans.org
From kindergarten classrooms to national security facilities, each event I attended during the opening weeks of the new year underscored one truth: The future of nuclear energy depends on the people we inspire, educate, and empower today.
I had a busy start to 2026, first speaking at the Nashville Energy and Mining Summit alongside Tennessee Electric Cooperative Association senior vice president Justin Maierhofer to explore the necessary synergies among policy, academic coursework, research, and industry expertise in accelerating American nuclear innovation. Drawing on experiences in high-level government relations and public affairs and decades of work in nuclear instrumentation advancements, we discussed Tennessee’s nuclear renaissance, workforce development, and policy frameworks that support emerging energy demands.
Xiang M. Chen, Virgil E. Schrock, Per F. Peterson, Philip Colella
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 21 | Number 3 | May 1992 | Pages 1520-1524
Inertial Fusion Reactor Studies | doi.org/10.13182/FST92-A29935
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The HYLIFE-II ICE reactor uses molten salt, Flibe (Li2BeF4), as a liquid blanket material. After the microexplosion of the D-T capsule in the center of the chamber the emitted x rays ablate a thin layer of the liquid and generate a high temperature plasma. This paper uses a second order Godunov numerical method to solve for the gas dynamics of the ablated material in the central cavity. Because the initial ablation has very small characteristic length scale (about 10 microns), a time varying mesh spacing is adapted. The equation of state for Flibe vapor is used in the calculation along with the parameters for the HYLIFE-II design. The results reveal that the gas dynamic response is sensitive to the initial energy deposition in the liquid and that two- dimensional shock effects are very important in determining the pressure and density field in the central cavity. By neglecting radiation heat transfer, the current calculation results give a conservative estimation of the shock strength.