CER News:
UCSD to participate in a 6-year US-Japan collaboration on key nuclear technologies for fusion energy, entitled "Jupiter-III"

17 September 2006

Beginning April 1, 2007, a new 6-year phase of collaboration between the US and Japan on fusion nuclear technology will begin. The collaboration is sponsored by the US Department of Energy Office of Science and its counterpart in Japan, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Funding for this program consists of direct support of $7.8M from Japan, with matching funds to be provided by the US Department of Energy. Researchers at UC San Diego will participate and fill important leadership roles.

The Jupiter collaboration was originally started in 1995 as a 6-year program to characterize damage processes to structural and functional fusion materials during reactor operation. The goal was to study the dynamic behavior of fusion reactor materials and their response to irradiation conditions using fission reactors located in the United Stated. This was followed by a second 6-year collaboration JUPITER-II (2001-2007), which focused on key technologies for advanced blankets. The blanket is one of the central components in a fusion power plant, responsible for generating power, breeding the fusion fuel tritium, and shielding delicate components such as superconducting magnets.

The 3rd phase of the Jupiter collaboration will emphasize three primary technical disciplines in the general field of "Tritium and Thermofluid Control in Magnetic and Inertial Fusion Energy Systems". These include:

  1. Tritium and mass transfer in the plasma-facing wall and blanket
  2. Synergisms of tritium transport together with neutron irradiation
  3. Mass and heat transfer modeling
Several US facilities (see figure at right) will be used in support of the Jupiter program, including the PISCES facility and Laser-Matter Interactions Laboratory at UCSD.

The management of Jupiter-III will include researchers from the UCSD Center for Energy Research: Dr. Dai Kai Sze, US coordinator, and Dr. Russell Doerner, task area leader for plasma-material interactions.

 

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