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NN Asks: What hurdles stand in the way of nuclear power’s global expansion?
Jake Jurewicz
Nuclear technology is mature. It provides firm power at scale with minimal externalities and has done so for decades. The core problem isn’t about the technology—it is how the plants are built. Nuclear construction has a well-documented history of cost and schedule overruns. Previous nuclear plants often spent more than twice what was first budgeted, making nuclear among the power technologies with the largest average cost overruns worldwide.
Recent projects illustrate how severe the problem can be. In South Carolina, the V.C. Summer nuclear expansion saw projected costs rise from roughly $10 billion to more than $25 billion before the project was abandoned in 2017, by which time more than $9 billion had already been spent and customers were stuck paying for a site they have yet to benefit from.
Yasuhiro Suzuki, Yuji Nakamura, Katsumi Kondo, Noriyoshi Nakajima, Takaya Hayashi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 46 | Number 2 | September 2004 | Pages 234-240
Technical Papers | Stellarators | doi.org/10.13182/FST04-A560
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equilibria of Heliotron J plasma are investigated by using the HINT code. HINT calculates an MHD equilibrium by using the relaxation method, which calculates the time evolution of dissipative MHD equations. Since HINT uses Eulerian rectangular grids, it does not assume nested flux surfaces. In the standard configuration, magnetic islands appear inside the plasma in spite of low (<> ~ 0.4%). The width of the islands depends on the pressure distribution. To reduce island width, feedback control of the external vertical field is introduced. Because of the effect of the external vertical field, magnetic islands are suppressed. The effects of the net toroidal currents on MHD equilibrium are also investigated. The rotational transform is changed by the currents, but the Shafranov shift is almost unaffected. The width of the islands changes because of the change in the rotational transform.