• About
    • About Us
    • What We Cover
  • Advertise
    • Advertise
    • Our Advertisers
  • Contact
  • Donate
  • Send News
  • Subscribe

Oak Ridge Today

  • Home
  • Sign in
  • News
    • Business
    • Community
    • Education
    • Government
    • Health
    • Police and Fire
    • U.S. Department of Energy
    • Weather
  • Sports
    • High School
    • Middle School
    • Recreation
    • Rowing
    • Youth
  • Entertainment
    • Arts
    • Dancing
    • Movies
    • Music
    • Television
    • Theater
  • Premium Content
  • Obituaries
  • Classifieds

 

UT, ORNL lead national project to study nuclear fusion reactor materials

Posted at 6:57 pm September 16, 2012
By John Huotari Leave a Comment

A research team at the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory will receive $4.1 million during the next five years to study materials used in nuclear fusion reactors.

The funding is part of a larger $11.5 million U.S. Department of Energy project that includes seven other laboratories and universities across the country.

The goal is to help convert nuclear fusion, which promises an “almost limitless supply of clean and safe energy,” into a practical, commercial power source, a UT press release said.

The project is being led by Brian Wirth, UT-ORNL Governor’s Chair for Computational Nuclear Engineering.

Unlike the nuclear fission reactors used today, nuclear fusion doesn’t produce used radioactive nuclear fuel that has to be managed for years. However, nuclear fusion unleashes a very high-energy neutron believed to cause more damage to reactor materials than fission, Wirth said.

That’s because the process to create the energy is different, the release said.

“In nuclear fission, an atom is split into two smaller atoms which remain radioactive for hundreds to many thousands of years,” it said. “In fusion, two or more smaller atoms are fused into a larger atom that is not radioactive.”

The UT and ORNL researchers will look at how the surfaces of materials that include the reactor respond when they are bombarded by energetic neutrons and ions.

“Using high-performance computers such as ORNL’s Jaguar and UT’s Kraken, the researchers will try to accurately predict materials’ performance and evaluate materials systems and component design for the fusion reactor environment,” the release said. “The team will then be positioned to use their computational tools to evaluate new materials and component designs to enable fusion energy.”

UT and ORNL are expected to receive $850,000 during the first year of the Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing, or SciDAC, project.

Wirth said a fusion reactor works by introducing plasma—a hot, electrically charged gas that serves as the reactor fuel—into a vacuum vessel. The plasma is then confined using electric and magnetic fields into a central, vacuum region.

But in addition to the high-energy neutrons, the ions from the plasma escape and bombard material surfaces, Wirth said. This combination causes significant damage and changes the properties of the reactor materials.

“It’s likely materials do not exist today that could be used to build a reactor that would contain the plasma,” Wirth said.

The press release said the material property changes are driven by many processes that occur in less than a nanosecond but add up over time. Wirth and his team aim to develop models which stretch this interaction over many decades to study the long-term effects.

No current experimental facilities exist that accurately represent the environment these materials are expected to face, Wirth said.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences and Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research are jointly funding this SciDAC project. Collaborating institutions include Argonne National Laboratory; Los Alamos National Laboratory; Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; University of California, San Diego; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; University of Massachusetts, Amherst; and General Atomics.

Filed Under: Education, U.S. Department of Energy Tagged With: Brian Wirth, fusion reactors, Jaguar, Kraken, nuclear fusion, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, SciDAC, Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing, U.S. Department of Energy, University of Tennessee

Advertisements

 


Join the club!

If you appreciate our work, please consider subscribing. Besides helping us, your subscription will give you access to our premium content.

Some of our stories are free, brought to you by Oak Ridge Today with help from our members—advertisers, subscribers, and sponsors.

But some are premium content, available only to members. Those are in-depth, investigative, or exclusive stories that are available only on Oak Ridge Today. They generally require significant time to report, write, and publish.

You can subscribe for as little as $5 per month.

You can read more about your options here.

We currently offer five primary subscription options to readers, and they include benefits.

Basic

  • Basic monthly subscription ($5 per month)—access premium content
  • Basic annual subscription ($60 per year)—access premium content

Pro

  • Pro monthly subscription ($10 per month)—access premium content, get breaking news emails first, and submit one press release or public service announcement per month
  • Pro annual subscription ($100 per year)—save $20 per year, access premium content, get breaking news emails first, and submit one press release or public service announcement per month

Temporary

  • Temporary access ($3 per week for two weeks)

We also have advanced subscription options. You can see them here.

We also accept donations. You can donate here.

If you prefer to send a check for a subscription or donation, you may do so by mailing one to:

Oak Ridge Today
P.O. Box 6064
Oak Ridge, TN 37831

Thank you for your consideration and for reading Oak Ridge Today. We appreciate your support.

Commenting Guidelines

We welcome comments, but we ask you to follow a few guidelines:

1) Please use your real name, including last name. Please also use a valid e-mail address.
2) Be civil. Don't insult others, attack their character, or get personal.
3) Stick to the issues.
4) No profanity.
5) Keep your comments to a reasonable length and to a reasonable number per article.

We reserve the right to remove any comments that violate these guidelines. Comments held for review, usually from those posting for the first time, may not post if they violate these guidelines. Thank you for your patience and understanding. Thank you also for reading Oak Ridge Today and for participating in the discussion.

More information is available here.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More Education News

Covenant Health donating land for Roane State health science center

Covenant Health is donating about 10 acres of land for Roane State Community College's new $75 million regional health science training center in west Knox County. The Knox Regional Health Science and Simulation … [Read More...]

School board approves aviation career path

The Oak Ridge school board on Monday unanimously approved an aviation career pathway that could eventually allow students to get a private pilot's license. The board also approved a contract extension for Superintendent … [Read More...]

Extreme Classroom Makeover applications due Jan. 31

The deadline to submit a video application is about one week away in a contest that awards $25,000 to improve STEM education in public schools in the region. ORAU's Extreme Classroom Makeover is open to third-grade to … [Read More...]

ORCSGirls resumes in-person classes in Oak Ridge, Maryville

Oak Ridge Computer Science Girls (ORCSGirls) is resuming their free in-person coding classes for girls in grades 5-10, a press release said. In March 2020, all classes were switched to be virtual events in response to … [Read More...]

Roane to Tech paves path for transfer students

A relatively new program called Roane to Tech allows students to transfer from Roane State Community College to Tennessee Tech University to complete their last two years of college, and it provides students additional … [Read More...]

More Education

More U.S. Department of Energy News

UPF construction could cost more, take longer

The Uranium Processing Facility at Y-12 National Security Complex was supposed to be completed by 2025 for no more than $6.5 billion, but that might no longer be the case. In the past week, federal officials said … [Read More...]

Y-12 celebrates new fire station, emergency operations center

A new fire station and emergency operations center at the Y-12 National Security Complex will replace "severely outdated" buildings that were constructed in the 1940s, about eight decades ago. The new buildings will … [Read More...]

Oak Ridge EM prepared for cold weather to prevent failures

From DOE Office of Environmental Management’s "EM Update" newsletter UCOR employees Andy Rodgers, left, and Alex Johnson install heat tracing to protect systems at the Environmental Management Waste Management … [Read More...]

Extreme Classroom Makeover applications due Jan. 31

The deadline to submit a video application is about one week away in a contest that awards $25,000 to improve STEM education in public schools in the region. ORAU's Extreme Classroom Makeover is open to third-grade to … [Read More...]

You may hear Y-12 sirens when maintenance performed

There will be maintenance work on the public warning siren system in Oak Ridge during the week of January 23, and people in the area might occasionally hear audio from individual sirens around the Y-12 National Security … [Read More...]

More DOE

Recent Posts

  • UPF construction could cost more, take longer
  • Y-12 celebrates new fire station, emergency operations center
  • One person seriously injured in Wednesday crash
  • Oak Ridge EM prepared for cold weather to prevent failures
  • Covenant Health donating land for Roane State health science center
  • School board approves aviation career path
  • Wildcats name new football coach
  • Free dental, vision, medical services in February
  • Junior Playhouse performs ‘Gingerbread: Hansel & Gretel’ in February
  • Extreme Classroom Makeover applications due Jan. 31

Search Oak Ridge Today

About Us

About Oak Ridge Today
What We Cover

How To

Advertise
Subscribe

Contact Us

Contact Oak Ridge Today

Copyright © 2023 Oak Ridge Today