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Fukiushima Daiichi: 10 years on
The Fukushima Daiichi site before the accident. All images are provided courtesy of TEPCO unless noted otherwise.
It was a rather normal day back on March 11, 2011, at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant before 2:45 p.m. That was the time when the Great Tohoku Earthquake struck, followed by a massive tsunami that caused three reactor meltdowns and forever changed the nuclear power industry in Japan and worldwide. Now, 10 years later, much has been learned and done to improve nuclear safety, and despite many challenges, significant progress is being made to decontaminate and defuel the extensively damaged Fukushima Daiichi reactor site. This is a summary of what happened, progress to date, current situation, and the outlook for the future there.
M. Inutake, A. Ando, K. Hattori, H. Tobari, T. Makita, H. Isobe (20R01)
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 51 | Number 2 | February 2007 | Pages 141-146
Technical Paper | Open Magnetic Systems for Plasma Confinement | dx.doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1335
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Dynamics of a fast-flowing plasma through a magnetic mirror field was investigated. A highly-ionized, high-density, He plasma produced by a quasi-steady MPD arcjet (MPDA) was injected into a magnetic mirror. In a uniform magnetic field region, ion acoustic Mach number (Mi) was almost unity, while in a diverging field region the Mach number increased up to 2-3. When the supersonic plasma flows into a converging field region, a shock-like structure was formed. The subsonic flow downstream of the shock was re-accelerated up to Mi of 2-3. The sonic condition (Mi=1) is satisfied at the magnetic mirror throat as in a conventional Laval nozzle. The adiabatic exponent of ions was evaluated by comparing measured spatial profiles with the prediction from 1D isentropic model.