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Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
A. E. Costley
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 55 | Number 1 | January 2009 | Pages 1-15
Technical Paper | Electron Cyclotron Emission and Electron Cyclotron Resonance Heating | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A4048
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Electron cyclotron emission (ECE) has been of interest in fusion research since the beginning, in the late 1950s, of the worldwide effort to realize fusion energy. The initial interest was in its contribution to the power loss, which under some conditions was predicted to be a possible impediment to achieving net power generation from fusion. The current interest centers on the use of measurements of the emission as a powerful means of determining the value of some of the main parameters of the plasma: Most modern tokamaks and stellarators are equipped with extensive ECE measurement systems. Creativity, surprises, debate, careful experimentation, and solid theoretical work characterize the path in between, which has not always been smooth but through the diagnostic applications has ultimately been very successful. In this paper, we trace that path by identifying and illustrating the main developments. We also take a brief look forward. The transport of energy due to ECE is expected to play a significant role in the burn dynamics of fusion plasmas, and this role is outlined. Measurements of ECE are expected to play an important role in the diagnosis of future fusion machines, like ITER, that will achieve thermonuclear conditions. There are significant benefits and challenges associated with making measurements of ECE on such plasmas, and these are briefly summarized.