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Playing the “bad guy” to enhance next-generation safety
Sometimes, cops and robbers is more than just a kid’s game. At the Department of Energy’s national laboratories, researchers are channeling their inner saboteurs to discover vulnerabilities in next-generation nuclear reactors, making sure that they’re as safe as possible before they’re even constructed.
J. F. Lyon et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 3 | April 2005 | Pages 414-421
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Experimental Devices and Advanced Designs | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A723
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Four quasi-axisymmetric compact stellarator plasma and coil configurations are analyzed for their potential as reactors. A 0-D (volume-average) approach for optimizing the main reactor parameters allows study of the relationship between global parameters and the compatibility of different constraints for a given power output including plasma-coil spacing, coil-coil spacing, maximum field and coil current density, neutron wall loading, plasma beta value, etc. The result is reactor candidates with average major radii <R> in the 6-7 m range, a factor of two smaller than those of previous studies. A 1-D power balance code is used to study the ignited operating point and the effect of different plasma and confinement assumptions including density and temperature profiles, alpha particle losses, and helium particle confinement time for the different plasma and coil configurations.