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WIPP: Lessons in transportation safety
As part of a future consent-based approach by the federal government to site new deep geologic repositories for nuclear waste, local communities and states that are considering hosting such facilities are sure to have many questions. Currently, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico is the only example of such a repository in operation, and it offers the opportunity for state and local officials to visit and judge for themselves the risks and benefits of hosting a similar facility. But its history can also provide lessons for these officials, particularly the political process leading up to the opening of WIPP, the safety of WIPP operations and transportation of waste from generator facilities to the site, and the economic impacts the project has had on the local area of Carlsbad, as well as the rest of the state of New Mexico.
Aleksei Meshcheryakov, Irina Grishina
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 81 | Number 8 | November 2025 | Pages 858-868
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2025.2483060
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In many tokamaks, the effect of improving plasma energy confinement after injecting impurities, and accordingly, increasing radiation loss is observed. In this paper, we experimentally study whether this effect is observed at the L-2M stellarator. We ascertained that for the L-2M stellarator, in the range of operating parameters, the energy lifetime does not depend on the radiation loss power. We propose a mechanism for explaining the improvement in energy confinement observed in tokamaks with limiters after injecting light impurities. The safety factor gradient at the plasma edge increases after impurities are injected, as does the shear of poloidal rotation velocity. As a consequence, turbulent flows are suppressed, resulting in an improvement in plasma energy confinement. In stellarators, this mechanism does not work since the angle of rotational transformation is rigidly set by the coils of the facility magnetic system. The plasma confinement in the L-2M is not deteriorated after increasing radiation loss power due to the action of the plasma self-organization processes.