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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.
Nicolas Crouzet, Paul J. Turinsky
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 123 | Number 2 | June 1996 | Pages 206-214
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE96-A24183
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In solving few-group neutron kinetic equations in multidimensions, one must select time step sizes as a function of time such that the temporal truncation error introduced by the discrete time derivative approximation is limited to ensure the desired fidelity. When using the Euler backward finite difference to approximate the first derivative of the flux—a popular approximation because it ensures numerical stability—the truncation error is know to be O(Δt2) and proportional to the second derivative. By employment of the double-time-step-size technique, modified to reduce the frequency that double-time-step-size solutions are required, an estimate of the second derivative can be obtained, leading to an efficient computational algorithm for determining the near-optimum time-step-size sequence to ensure the desired fidelity.