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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Latest News
NNSA awards BWXT $1.5B defense fuels contract
The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration has awarded BWX Technologies a contract valued at $1.5 billion to build a Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment (DUECE) pilot plant in Tennessee in support of the administration’s efforts to build out a domestic supply of unobligated enriched uranium for defense-related nuclear fuel.
Anthony P. Belian, Edward C. Morse, Mike Tobin
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 30 | Number 3 | December 1996 | Pages 1167-1171
Neutron Sources for Fusion Technology Testing | doi.org/10.13182/FST96-A11963106
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) features optical components with line-of-sight access to the 14 MeV neutrons generated by fusion reactions in the target. Two of these components are a final focusing lens, made of fused silica, and a frequency conversion crystal comprised of two potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP) crystals.
The Rotating Target Neutron Source (RTNS-I), which was previously operated at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), has now been re-installed at UC Berkeley and is being used for the studies of neutron irradiation of fused silica and KDP. The machine has been installed so as to re-utilize the concrete structure that once housed the Berkeley Research Reactor, now decommissioned. The RTNS uses a 2 - 5 mA beam of deuterons impinging upon a spinning internally cooled tritiated copper target with a 110 Ci tritium inventory. Maximum beam energy is 399 KeV. The 14 MeV neutron production rate is 1.0×1012 n/sec. Some new features of the machine include fiber-optic coupled microprocessor control of accelerator parameters, a cryogenic tritium collection system, and a scrubber system for exhaust tritium management.
