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Fusion Science and Technology
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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
M. Reich, A. Bock, M. Maraschek, ASDEX Upgrade Team
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 61 | Number 4 | May 2012 | Pages 309-313
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-392
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For electron cyclotron current drive-based stabilization of neoclassical tearing modes (NTMs), it is crucial that the current deposition occurs as close to the island as possible; hence, its location needs to be accurately known. An NTM, rotating in the laboratory frame, causes fluctuations of magnetic flux measurable by Mirnov coils (dB/dt). Temperature perturbations in the vicinity of an NTM are caused by displaced flux surfaces and thus have the same frequency as the Mirnov signal but show a constant phase difference, which depends on the mode topology (poloidal and toroidal periodicity), on the toroidal displacement of the Mirnov coil with respect to the temperature measurement, and on the sign of the temperature change between the X-point profile and the O-point profile, which inverts somewhere inside the island. The sign flip of ΔTe is equivalent to a change of the phase difference between Te and magnetic reference by and therefore can be localized using the presented correlation method. Using the suggested algorithm, we can determine the rational surface that coincides with the radial island location with low latency and good reliability in real time from electron cyclotron emission temperature profiles when correlated with the appropriate magnetic fluctuations on a modern workstation computer.