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INL makes first fuel for Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment
Idaho National Laboratory has announced the creation of the first batch of enriched uranium chloride fuel salt for the Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment (MCRE). INL said that its fuel production team delivered the first fuel salt batch at the end of September, and it intends to produce four additional batches by March 2026. MCRE will require a total of 72–75 batches of fuel salt for the reactor to go critical.
Charles E. Kessel, Marc A. Firestone,, Robert W. Conn
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 17 | Number 3 | May 1990 | Pages 391-411
Technical Paper | Plasma Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST90-A29216
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The control of plasma position, shape, and current in a tokamak fusion reactor is examined using linear optimal control. These advanced tokamaks are characterized by non-up-down symmetric coils and structure, thick structure surrounding the plasma, eddy currents, shaped plasmas, superconducting coils, vertically unstable plasmas, and hybrid function coils providing ohmic heating, vertical field, radial field, and shaping field. Models of the electromagnetic environment in a tokamak are derived and used to construct control gains that are tested in nonlinear simulations with initial perturbations. The issues of applying linear optimal control to advanced tokamaks are addressed, including complex equilibrium control, choice of cost functional weights, the coil voltage limit, discrete control, and order reduction. Results indicate that linear optimal control is a feasible technique for controlling advanced tokamaks where the more common classical control, relying on the scalar/orthogonalized description, will be severely strained.