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Latest News
G7 pledges support for nuclear at Italy meeting
The Group of Seven (G7) recommitted its support for nuclear energy in the countries that opt to use it at a Ministerial Meeting on Climate in Italy last month.
In a statement following the April meeting, the group committed to support multilateral efforts to strengthen the resilience of nuclear supply chains, referencing the goal set by 25 countries during last year’s COP28 climate conference in Dubai to triple global nuclear generating capacity by 2050.
R. W. Moir, J. D. Lee
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 10 | Number 3 | November 1986 | Pages 619-623
Blanket Design and Evaluation | Proceedings of the Seveth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Reno, Nevada, June 15–19, 1986) | doi.org/10.13182/FST86-A24812
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We adapted the helium-cooled, FLiBe-breeder blanket to the commercial tandem-mirror fusion-reactor design, MINIMARS. Vanadium was used to achieve high performance from the high-energy-release neutron-capture reactions and from the high-temperature operation permitted by the refractory property of the material, which increases the conversion efficiency and decreases the helium-pumping power. Although this blanket had the highest performance among the MINIMARS blankets designs, measured by Mnth (blanket energy multiplication times thermal conversion efficiency), it had a cost of electricity (COE) 18% higher than the University of Wisconsin (UW) blanket design (42.5 vs 35.9 mills/kW·h). This increased cost was due to using higher-cost blanket materials (beryllium and vanadium) and a thicker blanket, which resulted in higher-cost central-cell magnets and the need for more blanket materials. Apparently, the high efficiency does not substantially affect the COE. Therefore, in the future, we recommend lowering the helium temperature so that ferritic steel can be used. This will result in a lower-cost blanket, which may compensate for the lower performance resulting from lower efficiency.