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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.
George E. Apostolakis
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 53 | Number 2 | February 1974 | Pages 141-152
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE74-A23340
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This is a theoretical investigation of the accuracy of conventional point kinetics in a multiregion reactor without feedback. The fundamental assumption of point kinetics is the splitting of the neutron density into a product of a known constant shape function and an unknown amplitude function. The model cannot acount for the distortion of the shape of the neutron distribution due to space-dependent perturbations and this results in an error in reactivity. It is to this error that bounds are derived. This is done by using the method of weighted residuals to reduce the original eigenvalue problem to that of a real asymmetric matrix. Theorems from matrix algebra are then used to find disks in the complex plane where the eigenvalues are contained. The radii of the disks depend on the perturbation in a simple manner. Examples of space-dependent step and ramp insertion of reactivity in slab reactors demonstrate the usefulness of the bound.