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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.
M. D. Oh, M. L. Corradini
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 95 | Number 3 | March 1987 | Pages 225-240
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE87-A20452
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A one-dimensional, propagation/expansion model has been developed for large scale vapor explosions based on a fragmentation concept involving film collapse and coolant jet impingement and entrapment. This fragmentation model was combined with the nonequilibrium propagation/explosion model to predict the integral behavior in a vapor explosion such as pressure history and explosion conversion ratio. The model predicts the correct qualitative trends from available explosion data (e.g., the fully instrumented test series at Sandia National Laboratories) as a function of fuel composition, coolant temperature, ambient pressure, coolant/fuel mass ratio, and initial constraint. Quantitative agreement with data is found to be quite dependent on the initial mixing conditions, i.e., coolant vapor and liquid volume fractions in the explosion zone. Some of the predicted trends would change when the scale increases.