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Fusion Science and Technology
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High-temperature plumbing and advanced reactors
The use of nuclear fission power and its role in impacting climate change is hotly debated. Fission advocates argue that short-term solutions would involve the rapid deployment of Gen III+ nuclear reactors, like Vogtle-3 and -4, while long-term climate change impact would rely on the creation and implementation of Gen IV reactors, “inherently safe” reactors that use passive laws of physics and chemistry rather than active controls such as valves and pumps to operate safely. While Gen IV reactors vary in many ways, one thing unites nearly all of them: the use of exotic, high-temperature coolants. These fluids, like molten salts and liquid metals, can enable reactor engineers to design much safer nuclear reactors—ultimately because the boiling point of each fluid is extremely high. Fluids that remain liquid over large temperature ranges can provide good heat transfer through many demanding conditions, all with minimal pressurization. Although the most apparent use for these fluids is advanced fission power, they have the potential to be applied to other power generation sources such as fusion, thermal storage, solar, or high-temperature process heat.1–3
H.R. Wilson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 2 | March 2002 | Pages 107-116
Equilibrium and Instabilities | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A11963508
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tearing modes often limit the performance of tokamak plasmas, because the magnetic islands which they generate lead to a loss of confinement, or even a disruption. A particularly dangerous instability is the neoclassical tearing mode, which can grow to a large amplitude because of the amplification effect that the bootstrap current has on an initial ‘seed’ magnetic island. This paper will address the mechanisms which dominate the neoclassical tearing mode evolution, and thereby identify possible control techniques.
