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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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February 2025
Latest News
WEST claims latest plasma confinement record
The French magnetic confinement fusion tokamak known as WEST maintained a plasma in February for more than 22 minutes—1,337 seconds, to be precise—and “smashed” the previous record plasma duration for a tokamak with a 25 percent improvement, according to the CEA, which operates the machine. The previous 1,006-second record was set by China’s EAST just a few weeks prior. Records are made to be broken, but this rapid progress illustrates a collective, global increase in plasma confinement expertise, aided by tungsten in key components.
S. Langenbuch, W. Maurer, W. Werner
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 63 | Number 4 | August 1977 | Pages 437-456
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE77-A27061
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A coarse-mesh method for the solution of multidimensional neutron kinetics problems is presented that is based on the approximation of the desired solution by basis functions with local nonoverlapping supports corresponding to the volume elements of the spatial mesh. Integration of the approximating functions over their supports, and exploitation of continuity conditions for neutron flux and current, yields local seven-point difference operators with solution-dependent coupling coefficients. Due to the finite-difference (FD) structure of the resulting matrix equation, any technique developed for FD methods can be used for its solution. However, a novel (“almost implicit”) alternating direction explicit-implicit technique has been developed that is especially suited for coarse-mesh applications. Numerical examples that demonstrate the high efficiency of the method are presented. By using a spatial grid corresponding to the fuel element structure, it is possible to compute power distribution and its time history very accurately (at most, with a several percent error) at an economically tolerable expense.