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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.
Richard M. Lell
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 178 | Number 3 | November 2014 | Pages 326-334
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE14-16
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The ZPPR-12 experiments conducted by Argonne National Laboratory were designed to study sodium void worth, cell heterogeneity, and neutron streaming. The small core made it possible to conduct sodium void and neutron streaming experiments over the entire core. The simple, clean, single-zone core had no internal structures such as internal blankets or control rods to affect measurements or complicate interpretation of experimental results. Criticality and selected sodium void worth measurements were evaluated for ZPPR-12, and a detailed uncertainty analysis was performed for the measurements chosen for the benchmark. Highly detailed as-built models were developed for all configurations selected for the benchmark. A simplified RZ model was also created for the criticality benchmark. MCNP5 calculations with ENDF/B-VII.0 data for the benchmark models show generally good agreement between calculated and benchmark values for keff and sodium void worth.