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PG&E to dredge Diablo Canyon intake system
The owners of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant plan to dredge a massive buildup of shoaled sediment from its seawater intake cove.
Pacific Gas and Electric spokesperson Suzanne Hosn said, “The dredging project in the Diablo Canyon marina will remove approximately 70,000 cubic yards of sediment to prevent circumstances that could impact the power plant’s cooling system. Dredging will take place for the first time since operations began because of a rapid increase in sediment.”
D. W. Faulconer
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 49 | Number 2 | February 2006 | Pages 202-211
Technical Paper | Plasma and Fusion Energy Physics - Plasma Heating and Current Drive | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1120
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Certain devices aimed at magnetic confinement of thermonuclear plasma rely on the steady flow of an electric current in the plasma. In view of the dominant place it occupies in both the world magnetic-confinement fusion effort and the author's own activity, the tokamak toroidal configuration is selected as prototype for discussing the question of how such a current can be maintained. Tokamaks require a stationary toroidal plasma current, this being traditionally provided by a pulsed magnetic induction which drives the plasma ring as the secondary of a transformer. Since this mechanism is essentially transient, and steady-state fusion reactor operation has manifold advantages, significant effort is now devoted to developing alternate steady-state means of generating toroidal current. These methods are classed under the global heading of "noninductive current drive" or simply "current drive", generally, though not exclusively, employing the injection of waves and/or toroidally directed particle beams. In what follows we highlight the physical mechanisms underlying surprisingly various approaches to driving current in a tokamak, downplaying a number of practical and technical issues. When a significant data base exists for a given method, its experimental current drive efficiency and future prospects are detailed.