Additive manufacturing, fusion technology, wolves and places I like to hike

Richard Nygren

Sandia National Laboratories

Monday, January 22, 2018

2:00pm

NW17-218

IAP Seminars

Richard Nygren has spent four decades developing advanced materials and components for fusion in R&D at four national labs, the Dept. of Energy and UCLA. Currently at Sandia’s Advanced Materials Laboratory on the University of New Mexico’s south campus, he is exploring the use of Advanced Manufacturing (AM+) processes as a transformative technology for manufacturing robust plasma facing components (PFCs) for future fusion reactors.  The PFCs must survive in a fierce environment that includes very high heat loads, bombardment with energetic ions and damage from fusion neutrons. Additive Manufacturing, already widely used, is transforming the world’s products and introducing new materials, such as rigid lightweight parts for aerospace, bio-active interfaces for applications in medicine, and novel complex multi-material structures. The transformative capability of AM+ seems like the best approach to make some novel materials architectures for the high performance heat sinks in fusion systems.   In this seminar, Richard offers ideas about future fusion reactors, explains the various technologies needed, and the potential for AM+ to enable innovations.*

In this talk, Richard mixes his own humor and slides of his treks in the wilderness.  Students and faculty who visit the institutions where he has worked may appreciate his recommendations for side trips.  As an avid outdoor adventurer, he sought wilderness accessible from his work sites and travels. He has hiked in the Sierra, Cascades, southwest canyons and once took a month-long solo arctic journey 400 miles down the Noatak River. 

* RE Nygren et al. 2016, A new vision of plasma facing components, Fus. Eng. & Des. 109–111 A 1, 192-202, invited oral presentation, Int. Symp, Fusion Nuclear Tech., Korea, October 2015

  RE Nygren et al, 2017, Advanced Manufacturing – A Transformative Enabling Capability for Fusion, invited oral presentation,  Int. Symp, Fusion Nuclear Tech., Kyoto Sept 2017 (in review)

RE Nygren et al. 2017, Development of Fusion Sub-components with Additive Manufacturing,  https://www.burningplasma.org/activities/?article=FESAC TEC White Papers