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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.
G. C. Pomraning, C. A. Stevens
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 55 | Number 4 | December 1974 | Pages 359-367
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE74-A23469
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The transport and diffusion equations appropriate for performing neutronic and photonic calculations in toroidal geometry are derived. This geometry is an important one in current conceptual designs of controlled thermonuclear reactors. It is shown that for an azimuthally independent problem, the toroidal diffusion equation can be cast into the standard r-θ cylindrical equation by appropriately redefining the diffusion coefficient, absorption cross section, and external source. A Fourier expansion of the diffusion equation to obtain the theta dependence of the flux is shown to have the same truncation properties as those associated with the spherical harmonics method. A more useful expansion is one in inverse powers of the aspect ratio of the toroidal system. An idealized problem is solved analytically to obtain the first-order correction term arising from the overall curvature of the toroidal system. For an aspect ratio of three, typical of Tokamak fusion reactors now under consideration, this result indicates that local errors in the flux in excess of 15% can arise if the toroidal character of the geometry is neglected.