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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.
F. H. Fröhner
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 106 | Number 3 | November 1990 | Pages 345-352
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE89-177
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Recent measurements define the prompt fission neutron spectrum of 252Cf from 25 keV to 20 MeV with sufficient accuracy to show that the standard representation by a Maxwell spectrum with the temperature parameter TM = 1.42 MeV is not adequate. The next simplest macroscopic representation, a Watt spectrum with the two parameters Tw = 1.18 MeV and Ew = 0.36 MeV, fits the recent data surprisingly well, at least as well as the best currently available microscopic models of fission neutron emission. The resulting chi-square does not indicate any need for a more sophisticated description, nor is the fit improved by refinements such as superposition of two Watt distributions (for a representative fragment pair), or relativistic corrections.
