Neal is a PhD student that started in 2018 investigating the miscibility gap in tungsten alloys as a means of improving the DBTT and radiation resistance for us in fusion reactors and high temperature applications.
Project: NanoStructuring tungsten for fusion reactors
Nuclear fusion offers the prospect of large-scale low carbon energy with no long-lived radioactive waste. Over 50 years of worldwide research to overcome the significant technological challenges is culminating in the ITER experiment, currently under construction in Cadarache, France.
In this, 50 MW of input heating is anticipated to output 500 MW of fusion power from a 150 million°C plasma sustained for up to 1,000 seconds, aiming to demonstrate the commercial potential of fusion power. The materials used to construct such reactors are exposed to extreme conditions in terms of temperature, heat flow and plasma ablation as well as neutron irradiation. This is despite the highly sophisticated magnetic confinement of the fusion plasma used to shield the reactor’s physical components and materials. The leading plasma facing material to withstand such temperatures is tungsten, the highest melting point metal. However, tungsten exhibits a brittle to ductile transition temperature (DBTT), and also suffers from irradiation embrittlement.
Techniques employed: XRD, SEM, TEM, EBSD, Pseudo in-situ recrystallisation