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Can hydrogen be the transportation fuel in an otherwise nuclear economy?
Let’s face it: The global economy should be powered primarily by nuclear power. And it probably will by the end of this century, with a still-significant assist from renewables and hydro. Once nuclear systems are dominant, the costs come down to where gas is now; and when carbon emissions are reduced to a small portion of their present state, it will become obvious that most other sources are only good in niche settings. I mean, why use small modular reactors to load-follow when they can just produce that power instead of buffering it?
R. Koch
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 53 | Number 2 | February 2008 | Pages 184-193
Technical Paper | Plasma Heating and Current Drive | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-A1704
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This lecture complements the three previous lectures on waves by addressing, on the basis of elementary and intuitive treatment, the process of coupling of electromagnetic power to plasma. Coupling is here meant in a broad sense. It consists of four different steps. (i) The first one is the coupling of vacuum electromagnetic power to plasma waves. An elementary antenna coupling theory is given. The state of the art in coupling models and status of comparisons with experiments are briefly discussed. (ii) The second is the transfer of plasma wave energy to particle energy. The resonant processes leading to this transfer are described in a heuristic way. (iii) The third one is the build-up of fast particle populations. It will be outlined through a sketch of quasilinear diffusion for the simple case of Landau damping. (iv) The last step is the conversion of power through the resonant particle population to bulk plasma heating by collisions, which will be briefly addressed.