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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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.
Kaushik Banerjee, William R. Martin
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 170 | Number 3 | March 2012 | Pages 234-250
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE10-77
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The kernel density estimator (KDE) is used to represent Monte Carlo tallies. Two new neutron flux estimators and their variances are developed, namely the KDE collision and KDE track-length tallies. These new estimators are capable of estimating the flux and its variance at any point within a given domain without any bin structure. The strength of these two estimators is illustrated with numerical examples in one- and two-dimensional geometries. Convergence properties of the KDE estimators are discussed and the KDE estimators are compared with the functional expansion tally (FET) and the conventional histogram tally. The results show that the KDE tallies compare favorably with the FET and histogram tallies with respect to accuracy and convergence rate. Disadvantages of KDE estimators are also discussed, and some future research scopes in this area are identified.