Karlsruhe, the Southwest German town, home to the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe [The Karsruhe Research Center - a major German center for nuclear research) and the Karlsruhe Institut fur Technologie, will host two separate Conferences on Materials for Energy Applications this year - in July and October respectively.
The July Conference (EnMat 2010) will mainly deal with materials for non-nuclear energy applications - Hydrogen Storage, Fuel Cells, Thermoelectrics, and related topics (though there will also be a plenary talk on Fusion Materials - this is especially interesting since Fusion does represent, well, a fusion of hydrogen and nuclear technologies). Extremely interestingly, a Fusion plant can be conceived as a complete hydrogen economy - it uses two isotopes of hydrogen - deuterium and tritium as fuel, generates (or breeds) tritium as a byproduct, and the resulting fusion heat can be used to split water either thermo-chemically or electrochemically to yield molecular hydrogen - which can be used in fuel cells to generate electricity, or burnt in internal combustion engines directly. [I discussed this fascinating possibility in my presentation Nuclear Hydrogen Production: Re-examining the Fusion Option and the accompanying paper at the Canadian Hydrogen Association Meeting in 2007.] Fusion does indeed look even more interesting when viewed from the Hydrogen Economy prism.
The October Conference (NuMat 2010) will deal mainly with Materials for Nuclear Applications - fuel materials as well as structural materials for nuclear plants. NuMat 2010 will be a combined venue for several conferences on related topics which have previously been occurring separately, and there will be 6 major themes at NuMat 2010:
* Thermodynamics and Thermophysics of Nuclear Fuels
* Materials Models and Simulations for Nuclear Fuels
* Radiation Stability of Complex Microstructures
* Molten Salts for Nuclear Applications
* Structural and Functional Materials for Fission Reactors
* Structural Materials Modelling and Simulation
The July Conference (EnMat 2010) will mainly deal with materials for non-nuclear energy applications - Hydrogen Storage, Fuel Cells, Thermoelectrics, and related topics (though there will also be a plenary talk on Fusion Materials - this is especially interesting since Fusion does represent, well, a fusion of hydrogen and nuclear technologies). Extremely interestingly, a Fusion plant can be conceived as a complete hydrogen economy - it uses two isotopes of hydrogen - deuterium and tritium as fuel, generates (or breeds) tritium as a byproduct, and the resulting fusion heat can be used to split water either thermo-chemically or electrochemically to yield molecular hydrogen - which can be used in fuel cells to generate electricity, or burnt in internal combustion engines directly. [I discussed this fascinating possibility in my presentation Nuclear Hydrogen Production: Re-examining the Fusion Option and the accompanying paper at the Canadian Hydrogen Association Meeting in 2007.] Fusion does indeed look even more interesting when viewed from the Hydrogen Economy prism.
The October Conference (NuMat 2010) will deal mainly with Materials for Nuclear Applications - fuel materials as well as structural materials for nuclear plants. NuMat 2010 will be a combined venue for several conferences on related topics which have previously been occurring separately, and there will be 6 major themes at NuMat 2010:
* Thermodynamics and Thermophysics of Nuclear Fuels
* Materials Models and Simulations for Nuclear Fuels
* Radiation Stability of Complex Microstructures
* Molten Salts for Nuclear Applications
* Structural and Functional Materials for Fission Reactors
* Structural Materials Modelling and Simulation
