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High-temperature plumbing and advanced reactors
The use of nuclear fission power and its role in impacting climate change is hotly debated. Fission advocates argue that short-term solutions would involve the rapid deployment of Gen III+ nuclear reactors, like Vogtle-3 and -4, while long-term climate change impact would rely on the creation and implementation of Gen IV reactors, “inherently safe” reactors that use passive laws of physics and chemistry rather than active controls such as valves and pumps to operate safely. While Gen IV reactors vary in many ways, one thing unites nearly all of them: the use of exotic, high-temperature coolants. These fluids, like molten salts and liquid metals, can enable reactor engineers to design much safer nuclear reactors—ultimately because the boiling point of each fluid is extremely high. Fluids that remain liquid over large temperature ranges can provide good heat transfer through many demanding conditions, all with minimal pressurization. Although the most apparent use for these fluids is advanced fission power, they have the potential to be applied to other power generation sources such as fusion, thermal storage, solar, or high-temperature process heat.1–3
R. Koch
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 61 | Number 2 | February 2012 | Pages 286-295
Heating and Current Drive | Proceedings of the Tenth Carolus Magnus Summer School on Plasma and Fusion Energy Physics | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A13515
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This lecture complements the three previous lectures on waves by addressing, on the basis of elementary and intuitive treatment, the process of coupling of electromagnetic power to plasma. Coupling is here meant in a broad sense. It consists of four different steps. (i) The first one is the coupling of vacuum electromagnetic power to plasma waves. An elementary antenna coupling theory is given. The state of the art in coupling models and status of comparisons with experiments are briefly discussed. (ii) The second is the transfer of plasma wave energy to particle energy. The resonant processes leading to this transfer are described in a heuristic way. (iii) The third one is the build-up of fast particle populations. It will be outlined through a sketch of quasilinear diffusion for the simple case of Landau damping. (iv) The last step is the conversion of power through the resonant particle population to bulk plasma heating by collisions, which will be briefly addressed.
