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GAIN makes diverse selections for its third round of awards this year
The Department of Energy’s Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear has recently awarded four third-round fiscal year 2026 vouchers to support the development of innovative nuclear technologies. Each company will get access to specific capabilities and expertise in the DOE’s national laboratory complex—in this round of awards Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories are named—and will be responsible for a minimum 20 percent cost share, which can be an in-kind contribution.
R. W. Moir, J. D. Lee
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 10 | Number 3 | November 1986 | Pages 619-623
Blanket Design and Evaluation | Proceedings of the Seveth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Reno, Nevada, June 15–19, 1986) | doi.org/10.13182/FST86-A24812
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We adapted the helium-cooled, FLiBe-breeder blanket to the commercial tandem-mirror fusion-reactor design, MINIMARS. Vanadium was used to achieve high performance from the high-energy-release neutron-capture reactions and from the high-temperature operation permitted by the refractory property of the material, which increases the conversion efficiency and decreases the helium-pumping power. Although this blanket had the highest performance among the MINIMARS blankets designs, measured by Mnth (blanket energy multiplication times thermal conversion efficiency), it had a cost of electricity (COE) 18% higher than the University of Wisconsin (UW) blanket design (42.5 vs 35.9 mills/kW·h). This increased cost was due to using higher-cost blanket materials (beryllium and vanadium) and a thicker blanket, which resulted in higher-cost central-cell magnets and the need for more blanket materials. Apparently, the high efficiency does not substantially affect the COE. Therefore, in the future, we recommend lowering the helium temperature so that ferritic steel can be used. This will result in a lower-cost blanket, which may compensate for the lower performance resulting from lower efficiency.