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RIC panel discusses pathway to fusion commercialization
Fusion leaders at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s annual Regulatory Information Conference discussed the path forward for regulating the burgeoning fusion industry. The speakers discussed government and private industry initiatives in the United States and United Kingdom, with a focus on efforts shaping the near-term deployment of commercial fusion machines.
A recurring theme was the need to explain the difference between fission and fusion. Representatives from the Department of Energy and Type One Energy highlighted this as an important distinction for regulators, as it will allow fusion to undergo its own independent maturation process for developing standards and regulations in the same way that fission has. Lea Perlas, Fusion Program director at the Virginia Department of Health, said that confusion between fission and fusion has been a common cause for misplaced concerns among community members surrounding Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ proposed fusion plant site near Richmond, Va.
D. W. Graumann, R. L. Creedon, B. A. Engholm, J. R. Lindgren, L. Yang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 1222-1227
Blanket and First Wall Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A23024
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A Lithium Blanket Module (LBM) representative of a fusion reactor blanket module has been designed and will be tested using the toroidal neutron source of the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) beginning in 1985. A rugged design consisting of 921 2.54 em diameter breeder rods in an 80 em cubic box has been developed, and the techniques and equipment necessary for mass production of the Li20 breeder pellets have been demonstrated. Analysis using a coupled Monte Carlo neutronics model has shown that tritium production is uniform across the module to within 8 em of the edge, and that the front face fusion fluence and central region tritium production can be calculated to acceptable accuracies for eventual comparison with measurements on the LBM installed on the TFTR.