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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.
J. Ongena, A. M. Messiaen
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 45 | Number 2 | March 2004 | Pages 453-466
Technical Paper | Plasma and Fusion Energy Physics - Present Status and Future | doi.org/10.13182/FST04-A512
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The total amount of heating power coupled to the plasma Ptot and the energy confinement time are determining parameters for realizing the plasma conditions suitable for the reactor. We recall that the ignition condition can be expressed by the following condition on the triple fusion product:NT = Ptot2/(3 Vol) = 3N2T2Vol/Ptot > (NT)ignition (1)with T [approximately equal to] 15 keVwhere = E/Ptot is the energy confinement time, E = 3NT Vol for an isothermal plasma with Ti = Te = T and a plasma volume Vol; N is the plasma density. The value T [approximately equal to] 15 keV corresponds to the minimum value of (NT)ignition as a function T (see Fig. 1). In the present discussion for the sake of simplicity, we neglect density and temperature profile factors. The heating power in most of the present experiments is given by Ptot = POH + Padd where POH is the ohmic power and Padd is the additional heating due to neutral beam injection or R.F. heating. At ignition, the additional heating power must come completely from the energetic particles produced by the fusion reactions and we must have Ptot = P if we neglect the residual POH and the plasma losses by Bremsstrahlung (PBr [is proportional to] N2 T1/2).