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Fusion Science and Technology
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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. M. Tran, J. Ligou
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 79 | Number 3 | November 1981 | Pages 269-277
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE81-A19404
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The time-dependent linear Fokker-Planck equation governing the transport of fast ions in a spherical host medium is solved in the suprathermal energy range, including both continuous slowing down and angular diffusion. Because of the parabolic nature of the angular dispersion term, an implicit time-centered scheme is proposed. On the other hand, a second-order diamond approximation in energy and space is chosen to avoid the spurious numerical diffusion driven by the usual first-order methods. The last variable, the pitch angle cosine, is discretized by centered finite differences. Good accuracy is demonstrated when comparing the results of the proposed method with the “exact” values given in the literature for some benchmark problems or by checking energy and particle balance equations. A numerical code (CIRCE) based on this scheme has been developed; it can be coupled to standard one-dimensional hydrodynamics codes after a few straightforward modifications.