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Russia withdraws from 25-year-old weapons-grade plutonium agreement
Russia’s lower house of Parliament, the State Duma, approved a measure to withdraw from a 25-year-old agreement with the United States to cut back on the leftover plutonium from Cold War–era nuclear weapons.
Jeffrey N. Brooks
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 18 | Number 2 | September 1990 | Pages 239-250
Technical Paper | Divertor System | doi.org/10.13182/FST90-A29296
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Sputtering erosion of the proposed International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) divertor has been analyzed using the REDEP computer code. A carbon-coated plate, as well as beryllium and tungsten plates, have been examined at medium and low plasma edge temperatures. Peak net erosion rates for carbon and beryllium are very high (∼20 to 80 cm/burn · yr) though an order of magnitude less than the gross rates. Tritium buildup rates in co-deposited carbon surface layers may also be high (∼50 to 250 kg/burn · yr). Plasma contamination from divertor sputtering, however, is low (≲0.5%), Operation with low-Z divertor plates at high duty factors, therefore, appears unacceptable due to erosion, but may work for low duty factor (∼2%) “physics phase” operation. Sweeping of the poloidal field lines at the divertor can reduce erosion, typically by factors of ∼2 to 8. A tungsten-coated plate works well, from the erosion standpoint, for plasma plate temperatures of ∼40 eV or less.