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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.
S. Yamashita
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 54 | Number 4 | August 1974 | Pages 432-444
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE74-A23437
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Accurate kinetics equations, which can be applied to a square and to a two-step gas-separation cascade composed of stages with a large separation factor, are derived from the exact conservation of matter in the unsteady state. The derivation is based on the assumptions that flow rates and holdups are independent of time and that the second derivative of the assay with respect to time can be neglected. If two or three additional assumptions, including the important one that the separation factor is nearly equal to unity, are added to those above, the author’s equations reduce to Cohen’s kinetics equations. If a square cascade with eight stages composed of separators having a separation factor of 1.1 is supposed to be operated in total reflux, the results of the calculations disclose that the assays and the 98% equilibrium times obtained from the conventional equations are overestimated by ∼12 and ∼10%, respectively, compared with those obtained from the author’s equations. The author’s kinetics equations promise to be useful for analyzing the kinetics of a square cascade with a large separation factor such as a centrifuge.