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In transition: Commercializing fusion power
Commercial fusion power is closer than ever. There are now around 30 U.S. fusion companies, several of which claim to be on track to connect to the grid as early as the 2030s.
Tokamak and laser inertial confinement approaches benefit from decades of research at facilities such as the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and ITER, with alternative concepts including stellarator, magnetic mirror, and Z-pinch confinement also making notable progress as private and government funding for fusion increases.
M. M. R. Williams
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 168 | Number 2 | June 2011 | Pages 138-150
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE11-45
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The aqueous homogeneous reactor has assumed some importance in recent years as a potential medical isotopes production system. The kinetic behavior of such systems depends on the rate of generation of the radiolytic gas bubbles and the associated reactivity void coefficient. In this work we describe a method based on perturbation theory, and a simple description of bubble production, for deriving a value of the void coefficient of reactivity. It is shown that, in the small void fraction limit, the void coefficient is dependent only on the system properties and does not depend on power level or the bubble properties. Values are given for the void coefficient for a range of parameters assuming that the voids are distributed in three different ways, i.e., uniformly, proportional to power, and equal to the distribution due to buoyancy. The results are in reasonable agreement with values obtained by others, using more detailed methods, based on the reactors SILENE and MIPR.