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Smarter waste strategies: Helping deliver on the promise of advanced nuclear
At COP28, held in Dubai in 2023, a clear consensus emerged: Nuclear energy must be a cornerstone of the global clean energy transition. With electricity demand projected to soar as we decarbonize not just power but also industry, transport, and heat, the case for new nuclear is compelling. More than 20 countries committed to tripling global nuclear capacity by 2050. In the United States alone, the Department of Energy forecasts that the country’s current nuclear capacity could more than triple, adding 200 GW of new nuclear to the existing 95 GW by mid-century.
Y. Yoshimura, S. Kubo, T. Shimozuma, H. Igami, H. Takahashi, S. Kobayashi, S. Ito, Y. Mizuno, Y. Takita, Y. Nakamura, K. Ohkubo, R. Ikeda, K. Ida, M. Yoshinuma, S. Sakakibara, T. Mutoh, K. Nagasaki, H. Idei, T. Notake, LHD Experiment Group
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 58 | Number 1 | July-August 2010 | Pages 551-559
Chapter 11. Electron Cyclotron Resonance Heating | Special Issue on Large Helical Device (LHD) | doi.org/10.13182/FST58-551
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Trials of steady-state operation (SSO) in the Large Helical Device (LHD) were started when a continuous wave (cw) gyrotron with the output power up to 0.2 MW was introduced to the electron cyclotron heating (ECH) system on LHD in 2003. During the first trial of SSO in the seventh LHD experimental campaign in 2004, severe temperature increase on the waveguide transmission line and, as a result, intense pressure increase in the evacuated waveguide occurred, which terminated the operation at 756 s. Additional pumping sections and cooling structures on the transmission line worked well, allowing a 3900-s sustainment of plasma with ne = 0.15 × 1019 m-3 and Te0 = 1.7 keV by 0.1 MW injection power in 2005. The improvement of the ECH system by introducing cw gyrotrons with higher power for further improvement of plasma performance in SSO is in progress.Investigations on electron cyclotron current drive (ECCD) physics have been advanced a few years after the proof of ECCD in LHD. By obliquely injecting second-harmonic X-mode EC waves in toroidal direction, stable current up to 5.5 kA is driven, which was evaluated as a difference in plasma currents of the co- and counter-ECCD discharges with 0.1-MW EC wave power. It takes a few seconds for the driven current to saturate. Change in profile of rotational transform by ECCD and profile of driven current density are investigated by use of motional Stark effect measurement. Peaked and localized driven current profile at the plasma core region was confirmed for on-axis second-harmonic ECCD discharges.
