All 3 entries tagged Conferences

The start of term – the end of the conference season

And so it is autumn again and with that the start of the new academic year. There has been much in the way of meetings for this group, increasingly with a nod to the fission community with meetings such as the Universities Nuclear Technology Forum (UNTF) and Nuclear Academics Discussion Meeting (NADM) both of which are places where fission and fusion people get to meet and discuss issues that are common to fission and fusion people and to get insights into aspects which might not be so obvious to people who are not specialists in any particular field.

The greater involvement of fission people in realizing fusion power is a benefit to all in that it will cut out some aspects of duplication and repetition, while having a better appreciation of the differences.

Some examples of this are the need for fusion-specific regulation that is tailored to the challenges and the potential dangers of fusion power that differ significantly from fission power.

There is also the rapid deployment of robotic technology in use in the fission industry. This will be critical in making fusion practical as well since areas adjancent and inside a practical fusion power plant will be expected to become significantly radioactive, even without the issues that tritiuim handling will cause.

What is clear is that working together will achieve goals faster and shows that fusion itself is becoming more of an engineering problem in terms of deployment and ensuring that it can be legislated once a power plant is ready.

Jessica Marshall : 30 Sep 2024 14:04 |  Tags: Conferences Engineering Fusionpower Netrowking |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Update from ICSHM12 – Posters win Prizes

Writing about web page https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/physics/news/?newsItem=8a17841a8e9ea087018ec28cefe373db

It's been a while since the last entry as there has been a lot of action in the RDM group. The main event this spring has been the 12th International Conference on the Science of Hard Materials at Bentotta, Sri Lanka,

This conference covers aspects of hard materials and refractory materials in terms of processing, applications and fundamental research into hard materials. This conference is significant in that it is the first time there has been significant presence from the nuclear fusion community, particularly with respect to advances in the study and investigations of low-activation tungsten carbides for compact nuclear fusion reactors.

Our group presented two posters and one oral presentation in total: The oral presentation being on the state-of-the art of RSBs from 2016-2024 and the posters being (1) Depth profiles of stress as measured by ESBD from proton and gamma-irradiated cWC and (2) Low-activation joining of cWC to steel.

While there were many interesting talks particularly on processing methods, the low activation joining methods poster won the PhD poster prize. Certainly, low activation joining methods are highly important since it is critical to prove the utility of hard materials and compatibility with other reactor components.

So Congratulations to Joe Gillham for the winning poster!

Jessica Marshall : 10 May 2024 12:19 |  Tags: Conferences Icshm12 Posters Tungsten Carbide |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Roaring into 2024

This is the belated New Year entry simply because this group literally roared into 2024 with a white-knuckle ride to finish polishing all the remaining cWC sample in time for the planned beam time at the DCF facility on the 17th-19th January. And by deadline we mean the literall 11th hour.

Still, that is why you have contingency time when sample prepping and why we made contacts with contractors from October. Timing slipped hence the final push to get sample out in time but at least we were able to work together and get everything out in time.

There is also a plethora of papers this year to match the shear volume of practical work completed next year. Progress has been made on disimilar materials joining to test the proof of principle of cWC and RSBs with steel. The RSB material family has expanded to include Gen 3 compositions to explore the boron limit.

So now we have a mountain of data to process, papers to write and new experiments to run.

Jessica Marshall : 05 Feb 2024 15:05 |  Tags: Bufff Conferences Funding Ion Beam Irradiation |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem