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Fusion Science and Technology
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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.
P. E. Labeau, Z. Ould Amar
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 126 | Number 2 | June 1997 | Pages 146-157
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE97-A24468
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Monte Carlo games especially designed for probabilistic dynamics problems have been shown to be very efficient for the calculation of a pressurized water reactor (PWR) pressurizer unreliability. However, these methods rely on the implicit hypothesis that transition rates and probabilities, as well as control means response times, can be precisely determined. But reality is different: Because of a lack of knowledge, only crude estimations of transition rates can be obtained. Moreover, control device response times cannot be assumed constant for rapid transients. Therefore, considering distributed values of these quantities seems more realistic. Several attempts to take into account these uncertainties, while conserving as many advantages as possible of the high-efficiency simulation techniques, are summarized. The PWR pressurizer application is used to compare the capabilities of the proposed methods.