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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.
Otasowie Osifo, Staffan Jacobsson Svärd, Ane Håkansson, Christofer Willman, Anders Bäcklin, Tobias Lundqvist
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 160 | Number 1 | September 2008 | Pages 129-143
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE160-129TN
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Decay heat is an important design parameter at the future Swedish spent nuclear fuel repository. It will be calculated for each fuel assembly using dedicated depletion codes, based on the operator-declared irradiation history. However, experimental verification of the calculated decay heat is also anticipated. Such verification may be obtained by gamma scanning using the established correlation between the decay heat and the emitted gamma-ray intensity from 137Cs. In this procedure, the correctness of the operator-declared fuel parameters can be verified.Recent achievements of the gamma-scanning technique include the development of a dedicated spectroscopic data-acquisition system and the use of an advanced calorimeter for calibration. Using this system, the operator-declared burnup and cooling time of 31 pressurized water reactor fuel assemblies was verified experimentally to within 2.2% (1) and 1.9% (1), respectively. The measured decay heat agreed with calorimetric data within 2.3% (1), whereby the calculated decay heat was verified within 2.3% (1). The measuring time per fuel assembly was ~15 min.In case reliable operator-declared data are not available, the gamma-scanning technique also provides a means to independently measure the decay heat. The results obtained in this procedure agreed with calorimetric data within 2.7% (1).
