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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. K. Combs, L. R. Baylor, C. R. Foust, M. J. Gouge, T. C. Jernigan, S. L. Milora, J-F Artaud, A. Géraud
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 34 | Number 3 | November 1998 | Pages 419-424
Plasma Fueling, Heating, and Current Drive | doi.org/10.13182/FST98-A11963649
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
High-speed injection of pellets, composed of frozen hydrogen isotopes and multimillimeter in size, is commonly used for core fueling of magnetically confined plasmas for controlled thermonuclear fusion research. Straight guide tubes have typically been used to transport/deliver pellets from the acceleration device to the outside, or magnetic low-field side, of the torus/plasma (distance of −5 to 10 m for most installations). Recently, alternative pellet injection schemes have been used in plasma fueling experiments, including inside launch from the magnetic high-field side on ASDEX-U and top launch (vertically downward) on Tore Supra and DIII-D. These schemes require the use of curved guide tubes in which the pellets are subjected to stresses from centrifugal and impact forces. Thus, with curved guide tubes the speed at which intact pellets can be delivered reliably to the plasma is limited. In impact experiments on flat plates, it was found that deuterium (D2) pellets can survive single collisions at normal velocities in the range 20 to 35 m/s. Several series of tests with various curved guide tube configurations have been carried out, showing that intact pellets can be reliably delivered at speeds of several hundreds of meters per second. The experimental data are summarized and discussed. Also, a model is under development at Tore Supra for predicting these phenomena, and preliminary comparisons with the data are discussed.