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Second round of Launch Pad selections includes eight newcomers
The National Reactor Innovation Center at Idaho National Laboratory has announced 13 project selections across 12 companies for the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad, a Department of Energy–led program that integrates reactor and fuel facility authorization, testing, and deployment support for private nuclear developers.
The Launch Pad emerged from the Reactor Pilot Program and Fuel Line Pilot Program.
According to INL, projects selected include reactor development and nuclear fuel cycle advancements, including fabrication, enrichment, and conversion technologies.
R. E. Olson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 4 | May 2005 | Pages 1147-1151
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Inertial Fusion Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A841
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Z-pinch fusion energy power plant concept is based upon an X-ray driven inertial confinement fusion (ICF) capsule having a hypothetical yield of 3 GJ with an overall target gain in the range of 50-100. In the present paper, a combination of analytic arguments, results of radiation-hydrodynamic computational simulations, and empirical scalings from Z-pinch hohlraum experiments are used to demonstrate that the absorption of approximately 6 MJ of X-ray energy by the capsule and 26 MJ by the hohlraum walls of an ICF target (~ 32 MJ total X-ray input) will be adequate to provide a 3 GJ yield. As a result, it appears that the Ref. 1 assumption of a 3 GJ thermonuclear yield with an overall target gain approaching 100 is conceptually feasible.