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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
NRC looks to leverage previous approvals for large LWRs
During this time of resurging interest in nuclear power, many conversations have centered on one fundamental problem: Electricity is needed now, but nuclear projects (in recent decades) have taken many years to get permitted and built.
In the past few years, a bevy of new strategies have been pursued to fix this problem. Workforce programs that seek to laterally transition skilled people from other industries, plans to reuse the transmission infrastructure at shuttered coal sites, efforts to restart plants like Palisades or Duane Arnold, new reactor designs that build on the legacy of research done in the early days of atomic power—all of these plans share a common throughline: leveraging work already done instead of starting over from square one to get new plants designed and built.
M. Sawan, L. El-Guebaly, P. Wilson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 52 | Number 4 | November 2007 | Pages 763-770
Technical Paper | Nuclear Analysis and Experiments | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1582
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Detailed three-dimensional nuclear analyses have been carried out for the chamber of a power plant concept that utilizes the Z-Pinch driven inertial confinement technology with a target yield of 3 GJ and repetition rate of 0.1 Hz per chamber. The elliptical chamber concept was modeled with the double-layered Recyclable Transmission Lines (RTL). Thick liquid jets are utilized to breed tritium, absorb energy, and shield the chamber wall. Two liquid breeder options were considered; the molten salt Flibe and the LiPb eutectic (Li17Pb83). The chamber wall is made of the low activation ferritic steel alloy F82H. While both breeders have the potential for achieving tritium self-sufficiency, the thermal power is ~6.5% higher with LiPb. However, a 55% thicker jet zone is required with LiPb to provide adequate chamber wall shielding. A thicker chamber wall is required with LiPb to reduce the nuclear energy leakage below 1%. The chamber wall does not need replacement except for the top part around the jet nozzles. Helium production in the chamber wall protected by LiPb is much lower than that with Flibe. Rewelding is possible only in the lower part of chamber wall below the pool.
