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Fusion Science and Technology
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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.
R.E. Potok, H. Becker, L. Bromberg, D.R. Cohn, N. Diatchenko, P .B. Roemer, J.E.C. Williams
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 1314-1319
Alternate Concepts | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A23038
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We present an analytical and numerical analysis of a tokamak reactor with a set of helical coils added in order to eliminate plasma disruptions. The optimal helical configuration was found to be a set of continuous, = 2 stellarator coils which are made of copper and are internal to the toroidal field coils, being the number of poloidal field periods. (The optimization process did not include evaluation of the viability of a modular stellarator reactor). Scaling laws were developed for this optimal configuration, and a series of parametric scans are performed with varying assumptions for the forces on the helical coils and the ratio of helical coil transform to plasma transform (M*). The option space available for attractive reactor designs is strongly constrained and involves large forces on the helical coils, low q plasma operation (q being the plasma safety factor), and moderately low M* (3 to 5). Numerical calculations showed that M* must be > 3 in order to obtain well defined flux surfaces. This is in agreement with results from the JIPP-TII tokamak.