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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.
M. Knight, P. Hutt, I. Lewis
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 121 | Number 2 | October 1995 | Pages 254-263
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE95-A28562
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The reactor physics code PANTHER has been extended to hexagonal geometries. Steady-state, depletion, and transient calculations with feedback can all be performed. Two hexagonal nodal flux solutions have been developed. In the first method, transverse integration is performed exactly as in the rectangular case. The resulting transverse integrated equation has singular terms, which are simply ignored. The second approach applies a conformal mapping that transforms the hexagon onto a rectangle. Pin power reconstruction has also been developed with both methods. For a benchmark VVER-1000 reactor depletion problem, both methods give accurate results for standard depletion calculations. In the more extreme situation with all rods inserted, the simpler method breaks down. However, the accuracy of the conformal solution was found to be excellent in all cases studied.