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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.
Glenn Bateman, J. R. Fox
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 1363-1367
Magnet Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A23046
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Ripple Reduction Poloidal Field (RRPF) coils together with blocks of ferro-magnetic iron shielding are used to design a commerical tokamak reactor similar in size to STARFIRE with only eight rather than twelve toroidal field (TF) coils. The RRPF coils function like segmented poloidal field coils, placed between the TF coils and the neutron shielding, carrying an average of ±6 MA turns of current in the torroidal direction. Together with an additional pair of vertical field coils carrying 4.8 MAT, they produce the poloidal field needed for a β ∼ 6% plasma equilibrium with elongation 1.68 and a pair of separatrices suitable for a poloidal divertor. The RRPF coils also reduce magnetic ripple near the top and bottom of the plasma while the laminated blocks of iron magnetic shielding placed under each TF coil reduce magnetic ripple at the outer edge of the plasma near the midplane from a maximum of 5.48% to less than 1%.
