During the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) reactor operation time, the plasma will give rise to high energy neutron and gamma flux, and this intense radiation field will result in serious radiation damage and activation effects on various detectors components. In this paper, neutron detector candidates for the ITER radial neutron camera (RNC), i.e., scintillator components [crystal and plastic scintillators, optical windows, and photomultipliers (PMTs)] and single-crystal diamond detectors, were investigated to establish their radiation hardness and stability under gamma irradiation. Radiation test was carried out at the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development Calliope plant (Casaccia R.C., Rome, Italy). The facility is a pool-type irradiation plant equipped with a ⁶⁰ Co source (energy = 1.25 MeV). Gamma radiation tests were performed in the dark and at room temperature for different total absorbed doses, as required for the application in ITER RNC. Scintillators, PMTs, and optical windows were irradiated up to around 100-kGy absorbed dose, while single-crystal diamond detectors up to around 5 MGy. Scintillators and optical windows transmittance measurements were performed in the UV-VIS range (300–700 nm), paying particular attention to the behavior at 390 and 420 nm (scintillating emission wavelengths). Samples were measured in the dark before and after irradiation and their performances were monitored at room temperature for some weeks in order to study the damage recovery in different conditions. For plastic scintillators, photobleaching and optical bleaching followed by thermal annealing processes in air were made to reduce the radiation damage. Quantum efficiency measurements were performed on the PMTs, and the pulse-height spectra and pulse shape capability of the scintillators were investigated by using gamma and neutron sources. The most relevant results of this paper concern the radiation damage observed in scintillators and diamond detectors. The crystalline scintillator sample showed much less radiation resistance than plastic scintillators. A strong damage to the silver deposition of the diamond contacts was observed already at 1.0 MGy, almost leading to contact destruction at 4.7 MGy.

In the framework of the European Optimised Microturbine Solar Power system (OMSoP) project, a novel energy system for solar electricity production was developed, based on the integration of the solar dish technology with Micro Gas Turbines (MGT). A pilot plant with a capacity of 5–7 kW_e was realized and installed at the ENEA Casaccia site (Rome) and went under testing to validate the feasibility of the technology and improve the current design. The present work deals with the development of a quasi-state system model, built in the Engineering Equation Solver environment, composed of different modules that correspond to the main system components. The system model was used to define the optimal system parameters, to help the elaboration on an operational strategy to maximize the overall plant efficiency, and to guide the improvement of the single components in view of their optimised design. From the analysis it emerged that the system in design conditions is able to generate, in nominal conditions, 4.5 kW_e instead of the expected 5 kW_e due to the limitation of the stator current to 13 A, while maximum levels of 5.6 kW could be achieved by “overcharging” the high-speed generator up to 15 A and operating the MGT at the very high speed of 150 krpm. From the transient simulation of the demo system on an annual basis, the maximum average output power is 3.58 kW_e. Regarding the cycle efficiency, the annual averaged value is about 17%, whereas the target value is 21%. The improvement of the generator only does not seem to significantly increase the power output on the annual basis (3.75 kW_e vs. 3.58 kW_e). Differently, the improvement of the solar dish, with the upgrade of the other system components, would significantly increase the system power output to around ~10 kW_e.

Hemispherical and near-specular solar reflectance are today the main parameters used in solar mirror characterization. Unfortunately they can not properly describe the mirror effectiveness in redirecting the Sun radiation towards a receiver in CSP applications because the reflectance concept is developed by assuming the impinging radiation travelling as a plane wave, like that emitted by an infinitely far point light source. Besides that, the measurement of the near-specular reflectance is so much difficult that slowed down the progress of the SolarPACES reflectance guidelines, still stopped at the 2013 version. The present paper launches a new idea in the ongoing discussion on solar-mirror qualification to work around these difficulties: solar mirrors could be better characterised by the new parameter named Sun Conic Reflectance (SRC), which represents the amount of solar radiation reflected at a point of the mirror, and intercepted by the receiver with acceptance-angle 2φ R . The standard measurement of SCR requires the setting of two conditions about the solar radiation: spectrum and divergence. The first is ASTM G173-03, for the second here was chosen that of a perfect clear-sky day, when the Sun-disk surface is uniformly radiating, and viewed from the Earth under 9.46 mrad, but any other could be chosen if it can experimentally implementable. For φ < 4.73 = 9.46/2 mrad, SCR and near-specular solar reflectance behave very differently, because the first represents the solar radiation intercepted by the receiver, while the second refers to the reflection of impinging plane-waves, with solar spectrum, towards directions deviating from the specular one of less than φ. When φ ≥ 4.73 mrad, the difference is much lower, and becomes null when φ is large enough. The second advantage of SCR is that it can be directly measured by means a simple experimental set-up which schema is shown and discussed in the paper. The formulae for computing SCR from near-specular reflectance are also reported.