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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.
T. Trombetti, D. L. Hetrick
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 86 | Number 2 | February 1984 | Pages 129-135
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE84-A18195
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A multinode treatment of the problem of nonlinear reactor stability is given. The nodal kinetics equations account for nodal powers, precursor concentrations, and temperatures. Nonlinear power-plus-temperature feedbacks are admitted in each node. Quadratic and logarithmic Lyapunov functions are considered. By formulating and solving a suitable nonlinear programming problem, the optimal estimate of the domain of attraction of the reactor-operating equilibrium state that can be afforded by the aforesaid V functions is explicitly constructed. An example of a reactor with two nodal power feedbacks (one destabilizing) and two destabilizing nodal temperature feedbacks is given. These feedbacks are seen to give rise to an unstable equilibrium reactor state, in the region of all-positive perturbations, which is extremely well approached by the boundary of the estimate of the domain of attraction.