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Fusion energy: Progress, partnerships, and the path to deployment
Over the past decade, fusion energy has moved decisively from scientific aspiration toward a credible pathway to a new energy technology. Thanks to long-term federal support, we have significantly advanced our fundamental understanding of plasma physics—the behavior of the superheated gases at the heart of fusion devices. This knowledge will enable the creation and control of fusion fuel under conditions required for future power plants. Our progress is exemplified by breakthroughs at the National Ignition Facility and the Joint European Torus.
Lane Carlson, Mark Tillack, Farrokh Najmabadi, Charles Kessel
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 2 | August 2011 | Pages 459-463
Power Plant, Demo, and FNSF | Proceedings of the Nineteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE) (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST60-459
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A graphical user interface (GUI) is being developed by the ARIES team to visually display large amounts of system parameter data relevant to tokamak power plants. The objective of the Visual ARIES Systems Scanning Tool (VASST) is to harness the scanning power of the new systems code by filtering the tremendous amount of data and displaying it in an interactive and exploratory manner. The goal of the software tool is to better understand the tradeoffs between design parameters and to gain insight into parametric trends.Progress has been made in creating a GUI that allows the user to intuitively and interactively create color-coded plots using any of the parameters within the database. Among other features, a user-input constraint allows the user to limit the parameter space to include/exclude certain ranges of data that are of interest.VASST is being utilized in conjunction with system analysis scans for the ARIES studies reviewing aggressive and conservative physics and technology assumptions to help define tokamak power plants.