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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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Latest News
Norway’s Halden reactor takes first step toward decommissioning
The government of Norway has granted the transfer of the Halden research reactor from the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) to the state agency Norwegian Nuclear Decommissioning (NND). The 25-MWt Halden boiling water reactor operated from 1958 to 2018 and was used in the research of nuclear fuel, reactor internals, plant procedures and monitoring, and human factors.
G. H. Miley, H. Hora, B. Malekynia, M. Ghoranneviss
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 1 | July 2009 | Pages 384-390
IFE Target Design | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 1) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A8931
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Block ignition was proposed recently as a possible alternate approach to fast ignition for ICF fusion. This approach uses a modified petawatt-picosecond (PW-ps) laser pulse shape where the prepulse is strongly suppressed. This results in highly directed plasma blocks due to nonlinear (ponderomotive) force acceleration with space charge neutral ion current densities above 1011 Amp/cm2. This allows ignition of deuterium-tritium targets at densities somewhat above solid state density. However, a key issue has been the need to reduce the extremely high thresholds for the high energy flux densities of the blocks as pointed out in a related theory by Bobin and Chu in 1972. Here we show how the threshold can be reduced by a factor up to 20 by two effects. An important contribution comes from the inhibition factor for thermal conductivity due to electric double layers created in the block process. The second effect is the reduction to the stopping length, giving increased heating by the fusion product alpha due to collective interactions in the blocks. Results from including these effects in a hydrodynamic analysis are presented. The advantage of this approach for an ICF fusion reactor is the relaxed pre-compression requirement for high gain.
