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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
Oliver Schmitz
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 61 | Number 2 | February 2012 | Pages 402-410
Diagnostics | Proceedings of the Tenth Carolus Magnus Summer School on Plasma and Fusion Energy Physics | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A13527
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Diagnosing the radial region around the last closed flux surface out to the plasma facing components is an important task as this interface determines the plasma wall interaction. In this lecture, spectroscopic techniques for measuring the radial profiles of electron density ne(r), electron and ion temperature Te(r) and Ti(r), plasma rotation and the radial electric field as well as the hydrogenic and impurity source distribution in front of the plasma facing components and the heat and particle fluxes to these components are introduced based on the example of the TEXTOR tokamak.