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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.
A. A. Kabantsev, C. F. Driscoll
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 1 | January 2005 | Pages 263-266
Technical Paper | Open Magnetic Systems for Plasma Confinement | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A658
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Weak axial variations in B(z) or (z) in "axisymmetric" plasma traps cause a fraction of the particles to be trapped axially, with a velocity-space separatrix between trapped and passing populations. The trapped and passing particles experience different dynamics in response to a variety of -asymmetries in the E × B rotating plasma, so a discontinuity in the velocity-space distribution f(v) tends to form at the separatrix. Collisional scatterings thus cause large fluxes as they smooth the distribution in a boundary layer near the separatrix. In essence, this separatrix dissipation damps the AC or DC longitudinal currents induced by plasma waves or confinement field asymmetries. This trapped-particlemediated damping and "neoclassical" particle transport often dominates in cylindrical pure electron plasmas, and may be important in other nominally symmetric open systems.