Neutral beam deployment on DEMO and its influence on design

The demands on the neutral beam heating and current drive system of a DEMO device exceed those of existing fusion experiments by several orders of magnitude. By predicting possible power waveforms it is possible to analyse the technological advances necessary to achieve a system relevant to deployment on a power plant. Achieving the necessary efficiency will require simultaneous improvements in beam current density, neutralization efficiency and beam transmission. Considering the deployment on the tokamak vessel shows no major disruption to the tritium breeder blanket and no requirement to reach a high packing density of injectors. The thermal management of components subjected to low heat flux for many hours is considered and it is shown that radiation cooling can be exploited to control the temperature of such items.     

Friction stir welding of aluminium casting alloys

The results of testing friction stir welding quality in relation to EN AC-43200 (AK9) and EN AC-45000 (AK64) aluminium casting alloys are presented. The test joints were made with the use of a welding machine constructed on the basis of numerically controlled milling machines. The assessment of the joint quality was made based on visual inspection, mechanical testing, weldment structure analysis and hardness tests. The purpose of the investigation was to discover the possibility of friction stir welding of casting alloys and the influence of welding conditions on joint properties and structure. The test results show good weldability of aluminium casting alloys by the FSW method. Sound welds can be obtained in a relatively wide range of welding parameters while the weld strength is satisfactory. In order to obtain the highest quality joints, the workpieces must be pressed onto the other, while the welding process cannot run with excessively high speed. The best mechanical properties of the joints were achieved when the friction process was conducted at a rotational speed of the mixing tool of 900 rpm.     

XPS studies of perovskites surface instability caused by Ar+ ion and electron bombardment and metal deposition

X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) was used to study the influence of low energy Ar⁺ ion bombardment, electron bombardment and Pt deposition on the SrTiO₃ (STO) single crystal electronic structure. Atomic composition changes were found and attributed to chemical reconstruction of the STO surface. A clear correlation between the presence of conducting, low Ti oxidation states in valence band and core level changes was detected. A strong effect caused by electron irradiation was ascribed to the electroreduction process. The influence of lanthanum doping on surface instability of STO was also discussed. The La doped sample (STO: 3,75% La) was found to be modified upon Pt metal deposition to a higher degree than pure STO crystal.     

Surface potential measurements of Langmuir films of azo dye/liquid crystal mixtures

Two-component films of a non-amphiphilic azo dye and a liquid crystal with strongly polar –CN group were studied at an air–water interface on the basis of the surface potential–mean molecular area dependence recorded simultaneously with the surface pressure–mean molecular area isotherm. Additionally, the morphology of the films was monitored with the aid of Brewster angle microscope. A conventional Langmuir technique was used to form dye/liquid crystal films during reduction and expansion of an area occupied by the molecules. From the surface potential value, the effective dipole moment in the first monolayer formed on the water was calculated. Moreover, the number of molecules with dipole moments directed from the water to the air with respect to those directed towards water was estimated. The influence of the two components' miscibilities upon the surface potential after addition of the dye to the liquid crystal was determined.     

Resolution improvement in two-photon fluorescence microscopy with a single-mode fiber

The dependence of spectral broadening of an ultrashort-pulsed laser beam on the fiber length and the illumination power is experimentally characterized in order to deliver the laser for two-photon fluorescence microscopy. It is found that not only the spectral width but also the spectral blue shift increases with the fiber length and illumination power, owing to the nonlinear response in the fiber. For an illumination power of 400 mW in a 3-m-long single-mode fiber, the spectral blue shift is as large as 15 nm. Such a spectral blue shift enhances the contribution from the short-wavelength components within the pulsed beam and leads to an improvement in resolution under two-photon excitation, whereas the efficiency of two-photon excitation is slightly reduced because of the temporal broadening of the pulsed beam. The experimental measurement of the axial response to a two-photon fluorescence polymer block confirms this feature.     

Highly scalable and robust rule learner: performance evaluation and comparison.

Business intelligence and bioinformatics applications increasingly require the mining of datasets consisting of millions of data points, or crafting real-time enterprise-level decision support systems for large corporations and drug companies. In all cases, there needs to be an underlying data mining system, and this mining system must be highly scalable. To this end, we describe a new rule learner called DataSqueezer. The learner belongs to the family of inductive supervised rule extraction algorithms. DataSqueezer is a simple, greedy, rule builder that generates a set of production rules from labeled input data. In spite of its relative simplicity, DataSqueezer is a very effective learner. The rules generated by the algorithm are compact, comprehensible, and have accuracy comparable to rules generated by other state-of-the-art rule extraction algorithms. The main advantages of DataSqueezer are very high efficiency, and missing data resistance. DataSqueezer exhibits log-linear asymptotic complexity with the number of training examples, and it is faster than other state-of-the-art rule learners. The learner is also robust to large quantities of missing data, as verified by extensive experimental comparison with the other learners. DataSqueezer is thus well suited to modern data mining and business intelligence tasks, which commonly involve huge datasets with a large fraction of missing data.     

HTGR reactor physics and fuel cycle studies

The high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) appears as a good candidate for the next generation of nuclear power plants. In the “HTR-N” project of the European Union Fifth Framework Program, analyses have been performed on a number of conceptual HTGR designs, derived from reference pebble-bed and hexagonal block-type HTGR types. It is shown that several HTGR concepts are quite promising as systems for the incineration of plutonium and possibly minor actinides.These studies were mainly concerned with the investigation and intercomparison of the plutonium and actinide burning capabilities of a number of HTGR concepts and associated fuel cycles, with emphasis on the use of civil plutonium from spent LWR uranium fuel (first generation Pu) and from spent LWR MOX fuel (second generation Pu). Besides, the “HTR-N” project also included activities concerning the validation of computational tools and the qualification of models. Indeed, it is essential that validated analytical tools are available in the European nuclear community to perform conceptual design studies, industrial calculations (reload calculations and the associated core follow), safety analyses for licensing, etc., for new fuel cycles aiming at plutonium and minor actinide (MA) incineration/transmutation without multi-reprocessing of the discharged fuel.These validation and qualification activities have been centred round the two HTGR systems currently in operation, viz. the HTR-10 and the HTTR. The re-calculation of the HTTR first criticality with a Monte Carlo neutron transport code now yields acceptable correspondence with experimental data. Also calculations by 3D diffusion theory codes yield acceptable results. Special attention, however, has to be given to the modelling of neutron streaming effects. For the HTR-10 the analyses focused on first criticality, temperature coefficients and control rod worth. Also in these studies a good correspondence between calculation and experiment is observed for the 3D diffusion theory codes.