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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.
M. Marseguerra, E. Zio, F. Cadini
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 155 | Number 3 | March 2007 | Pages 386-394
Technical Paper | Mathematics and Computation, Supercomputing, Reactor Physics and Nuclear and Biological Applications | doi.org/10.13182/NSE07-A2671
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Inefficient control of the water level in a steam generator of a nuclear power plant is responsible for frequent unscheduled reactor trips. This problem is particularly critical at low power, when the steam generator exhibits the "swell and shrink" phenomenon and flow rate measurements are highly unreliable. The design of a proper controller capable of avoiding expensive shutdowns is eagerly sought for increasing the availability of the plant. In this paper, we present an extension of an adaptive, stable, fuzzy controller, whose design parameters are optimized via a genetic algorithm. Computer simulations confirm that the devised controller bears good performances in terms of small oscillations and fast settling time even in the presence of steam flow disturbances.