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Latest News
Securing the advanced reactor fleet
Physical protection accounts for a significant portion of a nuclear power plant’s operational costs. As the U.S. moves toward smaller and safer advanced reactors, similar protection strategies could prove cost prohibitive. For tomorrow’s small modular reactors and microreactors, security costs must remain appropriate to the size of the reactor for economical operation.
Karl H. Spatschek
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 33 | Number 2 | March 1998 | Pages 50-59
Basic Theory and Fusion Devices | doi.org/10.13182/FST98-A11946994
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this overview, the main arguments for a kinetic description of a classical non-relativistic many particle system are reviewed. First, the need and strategy for a kinetic description of plasma particles is discussed. The Vlasov, the Landau-Fokker-Planck, and the Balescu-Lenard equations are presented as the most useful kinetic equations for the particle distribution functions. It is shown that a linearization of the initial value problem can already give interesting insights into the dynamic behaviors. In many cases a reduction to a plasmadynamic (fluid) description is appropriate, and popular truncations are summarized. Finally, the basic methods for a kinetic description of waves are presented. When some wave excitations are driven unstable and the collective motion of particles dominates, the wave-kinetic equations will be the appropriate dynamical equations. It is shown that spectra of the Kolmogorov-Obukhov type are exact stationary solutions of the latter.