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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.
Anthony Michael Scopatz
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 186 | Number 1 | April 2017 | Pages 83-97
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2016.1272384
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A method for quickly determining deployment schedules that meet any given fuel cycle demands is presented here. This algorithm is fast enough to perform in situ within low-fidelity fuel cycle simulators. It uses Gaussian process regression models to predict the production curve as a function of time and the number of deployed facilities. Each of these predictions is measured against the demand curve using the dynamic time warping distance. The minimum-distance deployment schedule is evaluated in a full fuel cycle simulation, and the generated production curve then informs the model on the next optimization iteration. The method converges within five to ten iterations to a distance that is less than 1% of the total deployable production. This speed of convergence makes it suitable for use even when fuel cycle realizations are expensive, as in higher-fidelity or agent-based simulators. A representative once-through fuel cycle is used to demonstrate the methodology for reactor deployment. However, the algorithm itself is multivariate and may be used to determine the deployment schedules of many facility types that meet a number of independent criteria simultaneously. The once-through, electricity production example was chosen for the simplicity of illustrating the method.