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Swiss nuclear power and the case for long-term operation
Designed for 40 years but built to last far longer, Switzerland’s nuclear power plants have all entered long-term operation. Yet age alone says little about safety or performance. Through continuous upgrades, strict regulatory oversight, and extensive aging management, the country’s reactors are being prepared for decades of continued operation, in line with international practice.
Jeffrey N. Brooks, Robert L. Kustom
Nuclear Technology | Volume 46 | Number 1 | November 1979 | Pages 61-81
Technical Paper | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT79-A32380
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The power supply requirements for a 7-m major radius commercial tokamak reactor have been examined, using a system approach combining models of the reactor and poloidal coil set, plasma burn cycle and magnetohydrodynamics calculations, and power supply characteristics and cost data. A conventional system using a motor-generator flywheel set and solid-state rectifier/inverter power supplies was studied in addition to systems using a homo-polar generator, superconducting energy storage inductor, and dump resistors. The requirements and cost of the power supplies depend on several factors but most critically on the ohmic heating ramp time used for startup. Long ramp times (≳8 s) seem to be feasible, from the standpoint of resistive volt-second losses, and would appear to make conventional systems quite competitive with nonconventional ones, which require further research and development.