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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.
H. Utoh, K. Nishimura, S. Inagaki, H. Takahashi, Y. Tanaka, M. Takenaga, M. Ogawa, J. Shinde, K. Iwazaki, A. Okamoto, K. Shinto, S. Kitajima, M. Sasao
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 50 | Number 3 | October 2006 | Pages 434-439
Technical Paper | Stellarators | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1266
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the Tohoku University Heliac, a high-density plasma is produced by a vanadium electrode. The vanadium electrode is pretreated for hydrogen storage. In biasing experiments using the vanadium electrode, a high-density plasma is observed in not only argon plasmas but also helium plasmas. When the vanadium electrode is biased negatively, the radial distribution of the electron density steepens at the electrode position, and a strong negative radial electric field is formed between the electrode and the last closed flux surface. The E × B drift velocity is 30 km/s, and the estimated poloidal Mach number Mp is -20. The measured beta value exceeded 0.5% in the low-field discharges.