Materials for Fusion Energy

Abstract

Materials research and development specifically for potential application in fusion energy development had its origin in the early 1970s, following the impetus of the 1973 report to the President on “The Nation's Energy Future” by Dixie Lee Ray then chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. The first scientific conferences on fusion materials took place in the summer and the fall of 1975 at Argonne National Laboratory and at Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Argonne's international conference set a direction for the use and development of irradiation testing facilities for fusion materials which continues today.In his keynote to the Gatlinburg meeting on “Radiation Damage and Tritium in Fusion Materials,” E.E. Kintner, then deputy director of the U.S. magnetic fusion program, spoke directly to the hearts of the materials community:“Materials is the Queen Technology of any advanced technical system. The economics eventually depend upon the materials, the reliability depends upon the materials, and the safety depends upon the materials. I assure you that before we are through with fusion, the physicists will give way to the materials engineers as being the leading lights of fusion.”Kintner spoke from his experience in naval and civilian nuclear power systems, with reference to the special threats of the fusion reactor environment to the integrity of materials, and from practical engineering issues in a broad sense.