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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 8–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Japan gets new U for enrichment as global power and fuel plans grow
President Trump is in Japan today, with a visit with new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on the agenda. Takaichi, who took office just last week as Japan’s first female prime minister, has already spoken in favor of nuclear energy and of accelerating the restart of Japan’s long-shuttered power reactors, as Reuters and others have reported. Much of the uranium to power those reactors will be enriched at Japan’s lone enrichment facility—part of Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd.’s Rokkasho fuel complex—which accepted its first delivery of fresh uranium hexafluoride (UF₆) in 11 years earlier this month.
Hemant Kumar, K. V. Phani Prabhakar, Shiju Sam, S. K. Albert, G. Padmanabham, A. K. Bhaduri, T. Jayakumar, E. Rajendra Kumar
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 66 | Number 1 | July-August 2014 | Pages 192-199
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-747
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Laser and laser hybrid welding are among the processes chosen for joining Indian reduced activation ferritic martensitic (INRAFM) steel that will be used for fabrication of Indian test blanket modules (TBMs) to be tested in ITER. In the present study, a 3.5 kW slab CO2 laser in autogenous mode and hybridized mode with MIG were successfully employed to make butt joints in plates 6 mm and 12 mm thick respectively. Initially, bead-on-plate (BOP) experiments were conducted to study the effect of various laser and laser hybrid welding parameters such as laser power, welding speed, MIG torch angle, wire feed rate, composition of torch gas, gas shielding arrangement, stand off, distance between arc and laser, and focal position of the laser with respect to the surface. The resultant weld beads were evaluated for weld penetration, width of the weld, and width of the HAZ. Based on BOP welding studies, parameters were chosen for carrying out butt welding experiments using square butt for 6 mm plates and Y-groove edged configurations for 12 mm thick plates with various root face heights and included angles. The radiography results showed that all the welds were acceptable as per ASME Section III. The welds were also evaluated using hardness tests, metallographic analysis, and tensile, bend, and impact tests.