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Latest News
Playing the “bad guy” to enhance next-generation safety
Sometimes, cops and robbers is more than just a kid’s game. At the Department of Energy’s national laboratories, researchers are channeling their inner saboteurs to discover vulnerabilities in next-generation nuclear reactors, making sure that they’re as safe as possible before they’re even constructed.
Andrea M. Garofalo
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 44 | Number 4 | December 2003 | Pages 756-762
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST44-756
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A simple model is used to analyze the systems for feedback stabilization of the resistive wall mode (RWM) in proposed burning plasma experiments. In ITER, the presence of several conducting structures close to the control coils, but far from the plasma, leads to a slow feedback response time compared to the time scale of the RWM growth. In FIRE, the copper shell passive stabilizer sets a relatively long time scale for the RWM growth; therefore, the effects of higher resistivity structures close to the coils and far from the plasma are nearly negligible. RWM feedback control should be able to raise the stable N up to near the ideal-wall limit in FIRE with moderate requirements on the feedback electronics bandwidth.