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Swiss nuclear power and the case for long-term operation
Designed for 40 years but built to last far longer, Switzerland’s nuclear power plants have all entered long-term operation. Yet age alone says little about safety or performance. Through continuous upgrades, strict regulatory oversight, and extensive aging management, the country’s reactors are being prepared for decades of continued operation, in line with international practice.
Ken-ichi Hattori, Yoichi Hirano, Yasuyuki Yagi, Toshio Shimada, Kiyoshi Hayase
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 28 | Number 4 | November 1995 | Pages 1619-1633
Technical Paper | Plasma Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A30429
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Zero-dimensional power balance is analyzed, and an operation boundary is deduced in a “beam-assisted reversed-field pinch”; the latter utilizes partial poloidal current drive by neutral beams so that transport losses arising from magnetohydrodynamics (MHD)-dynamo, i.e., tearing mode instability are reduced. Changes of power flow and heat conductivity due to a beam driven current are treated by considering an MHD-dynamo-based power balance model that assumes linear dependence of magnetic fluctuation level on the externally driven current. It is shown that a ratio of a beam driven current to a dynamo current must not exceed ∼40% regarding a beta-limit in the next generation of plasma experiments (minor radius/major radius = 0.6m/1.8 m, plasma current = 1 MA, poloidal beta = 0.1). At that point, the energy confinement time is predicted to increase by a multiple or so of that estimated from the MHD dynamo model without a current drive.