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60 Years of U: Perspectives on resources, demand, and the evolving role of nuclear energy
Recent years have seen growing global interest in nuclear energy and rising confidence in the sector. For the first time since the early 2000s, there is renewed optimism about the industry’s future. This change is driven by several major factors: geopolitical developments that highlight the need for secure energy supplies, a stronger focus on resilient energy systems, national commitments to decarbonization, and rising demand for clean and reliable electricity.
Clifford E. Singer, Long-Poe Ku, Glenn Bateman
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 13 | Number 4 | May 1988 | Pages 543-554
Technical Paper | Plasma Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST88-A25134
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nominal predicted plasma conditions in a Compact Ignition Tokamak (CIT) are illustrated by transport simulations using experimentally calibrated plasma transport models. The range of uncertainty in these predictions is explored by using various models that have given almost equally good fits to experimental data. Using a transport model that best fits the data, thermonuclear ignition occurs in a CIT design with a major radius of 1.32 m, plasma half-width of 0.43 m, elongation of 2.0, and toroidal field and plasma current ramped in 6 s from 1.7 to 10.4 T and 0.7 to 10 MA, respectively. Ignition is facilitated by 20 MW of heating deposited off the magnetic axis near the 3He minority cyclotron resonance layer. Under these conditions, sawtooth oscillations are small and have little impact on ignition. Tritium inventory is minimized by preconditioning most discharges with deuterium. Tritium is injected, in large frozen pellets, only after minority resonance preheating. Variations of the transport model, impurity influx, heating prof He, and pellet ablation rates have a large effect on ignition and on the maximum beta that can be achieved.