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Playing the “bad guy” to enhance next-generation safety
Sometimes, cops and robbers is more than just a kid’s game. At the Department of Energy’s national laboratories, researchers are channeling their inner saboteurs to discover vulnerabilities in next-generation nuclear reactors, making sure that they’re as safe as possible before they’re even constructed.
M. Ichimura et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 59 | Number 1 | January 2011 | Pages 98-103
doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A11583
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Plasmas with high ion-temperature of several keV have been produced by using ion-cyclotron range of frequency (ICRF) heating in the GAMMA 10 tandem mirror. In such high performance plasmas, high and low-frequency fluctuations are excited and ions trapped in the magnetic field interact with such fluctuations. Three types of wave-particle interactions have been observed in the GAMMA 10 tandem mirror. The turning point diffusion near the ion cyclotron resonance layer has been observed in minimum-B configuration on the anchor cell. Pitch angle scattering of high-energy ions due to the AIC modes and low-frequency waves which have differential frequencies between discrete peaks of the AIC modes are clearly detected. The drift-type fluctuations are clearly observed in the central cell. By using a semiconductor detector, high-energy ions are detected at the radial location far from the plasma edge. The fluctuation, of which frequency is the same as that of drift-type fluctuation, is observed in the signal of high-energy ions. From the pitch angle distribution of the phase differences between both fluctuations, radial transport of high-energy ions caused by drift-type fluctuations near their turning points in the confining mirror field is suggested in the experiments.