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Fusion Science and Technology
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RIC panel discusses pathway to fusion commercialization
Fusion leaders at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s annual Regulatory Information Conference discussed the path forward for regulating the burgeoning fusion industry. The speakers discussed government and private industry initiatives in the United States and United Kingdom, with a focus on efforts shaping the near-term deployment of commercial fusion machines.
A recurring theme was the need to explain the difference between fission and fusion. Representatives from the Department of Energy and Type One Energy highlighted this as an important distinction for regulators, as it will allow fusion to undergo its own independent maturation process for developing standards and regulations in the same way that fission has. Lea Perlas, Fusion Program director at the Virginia Department of Health, said that confusion between fission and fusion has been a common cause for misplaced concerns among community members surrounding Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ proposed fusion plant site near Richmond, Va.
A. Smirnov et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 59 | Number 1 | January 2011 | Pages 271-273
doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A11632
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Unlike tokamaks, where the neutral beam shine through is rarely an issue, open magnetic systems with neutral beam injection oftentimes suffer from incomplete beam capture, which necessitates the handling of the shine through power load and beam particle recycling. The cathodic arc gettering, which provides high evaporation rate coupled with a fast time response, is a powerful and versatile technique for depositing clean getter films in vacuum. A compact neutral beam dump utilizing the titanium arc gettering was developed for a field-reversed configuration plasma sustained by 1 MW, 20–40 keV neutral hydrogen beams. The beam dump is capable of handling large, pulsed gas loads, has a high sorption capacity, and is robust and reliable. The beam recycling coefficient, measured under the beam particle flux density of 5 × 1017 H/(cm2s) sustained for 3–10 ms, is ~0.7. The use of the beam dump allows to reduce the recycling of the shine through neutral beam by factor of 3–5, as well as to improve the vacuum conditions in the machine.
