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North American construction is back—smaller and faster—at OPG’s Darlington
“The nuclear renaissance is real here,” said Ontario Power Generation’s Subo Sinnathamby on May 8, one year to the day after OPG secured a final investment decision to build the first of four planned BWRX-300 reactors at its Darlington nuclear power plant, and shortly after the new reactor’s foundation was lifted into place. “We got our license to construct in April and our [final investment decision] in May, and we’ve been off to the races since.”
S. L. Rao, Anjali Sharma, Mahesh Kushwah, Parth Kalaria, Tarun Kumar Sharma, Vipal Rathod, Ronak Shah, Deepak Mandge, and Gaurav Joshi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 65 | Number 1 | January 2014 | Pages 129-144
Lecture | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-642
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Electron cyclotron (EC) heating and current drive is a well-established auxiliary heating mechanism for tokamak plasmas, which is also effective in assisting plasma breakdown and controlling disruptive plasma instabilities. ITER requires 20 MW of power at 170-GHz frequency to be coupled into the plasma for EC radio-frequency (rf) applications. Gyrotrons are rf/microwave oscillators capable of delivering high continuous-wave power in the microwave and millimeter-wave frequency range (a few to hundreds of gigahertz). An EC system with 26 gyrotron sources at 170 GHz, with a typical unit power of 1 MW each, and a total installed power capacity of 24 MW is planned for ITER. As a part of the in-kind contributions, the Indian domestic agency is responsible for two sets of EC sources that provide 2 MW (∼8%) of the EC power at 170-GHz frequency. Here, we provide an overview of the gyrotron source system, its basic concepts and main features, design aspects, auxiliary requirements, performance issues, and future research and development goals.