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Fusion energy: Progress, partnerships, and the path to deployment
Over the past decade, fusion energy has moved decisively from scientific aspiration toward a credible pathway to a new energy technology. Thanks to long-term federal support, we have significantly advanced our fundamental understanding of plasma physics—the behavior of the superheated gases at the heart of fusion devices. This knowledge will enable the creation and control of fusion fuel under conditions required for future power plants. Our progress is exemplified by breakthroughs at the National Ignition Facility and the Joint European Torus.
Samuel Olivier, Terry S. Haut
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 198 | Number 6 | June 2024 | Pages 1179-1214
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2023.2238171
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We present high-order, finite element–based Second Moment Methods (SMMs) for solving radiation transport problems in two spatial dimensions. We leverage the close connection between the Variable Eddington Factor (VEF) method and SMM to convert existing discretizations of the VEF moment system to discretizations of the SMM moment system. The moment discretizations are coupled to a high-order Discontinuous Galerkin discretization of the SN transport equations. We show that the resulting methods achieve high-order accuracy on high-order (curved) meshes, preserve the thick diffusion limit, and are effective on a challenging multimaterial problem both in outer fixed-point iterations and in inner preconditioned iterative solver iterations for the discrete moment systems. We also present parallel scaling results and provide direct comparisons to the VEF algorithms from which the SMM algorithms were derived.