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Upgraded Russian tokamak T-15 launch in 2018
Thermonuclear Experimental Tokamak T-15 in the NRC "Kurchatov Institute» i>
Russian nuclear physicists continue experimenting with nuclear fusion, begun in the USSR. They are actively involved in international ITER project , and parallel work on their own and thermonuclear installation of alternative hybrid design.
At the Kurchatov Institute at the finish line came out a project to modernize the experimental thermonuclear reactor tokamak T-15 a >.
Start the installation is scheduled for 2018. About this said at a press conference, Deputy General Director of Rosatom Vyacheslav Pershukov. Funding for the project will be modest by today's standards 2, 5 billion rubles.
Tokamak (toroidal chamber with magnetic coils) - toroidal device for magnetic plasma confinement in order to achieve the necessary conditions for the occurrence of controlled thermonuclear fusion.
Tokamak T-15 is one of the world's largest experimental fusion devices. The site of the Kurchatov Institute said that "the presence of a unique setup gives the world's largest superconducting niobium-tin toroidal magnet» (видео).
But most importantly, on the basis of the T-15 Russian physicists are going to create the first hybrid reactor, which promises to make a real revolution in the energy sector, providing fuel to all nuclear power plants in the world.
"Thermonuclear neutrons can be used in a hybrid reactor blanket for the new fuel, - explains president of the Kurchatov Institute Academician Yevgeny Velikhov. - Blanket - a layer of material that surrounds the core, e.g., a fusion reactor, it is intended to delay departing from the core particles, and also for the conversion of energy into heat, and the particles for producing recycled fuel. Placing it in the molten salt composition based on metal fluoride raw isotope uranium-238 or thorium-232 and provide fast processing of chemical salts irradiated thermonuclear neutrons, can provide new fissile isotopes and later use them in a nuclear reactor ».
This approach has several advantages, including a thousand times less radioactivity, liberated from the spent nuclear fuel (SNF) depending on the type of reactors in the production of the same amount of new fissionable isotope (see. Graph).
"Back in 1973, I discussed this idea with the American specialist John Holdren, now chief scientific adviser to the US president - said Yevgeny Velikhov. - And in 1978, we have completed the first draft of hybrid reactors, but then we did not have the technical basis for their implementation. Today, thanks to the development of nuclear fusion, we have gained tremendous experience, have developed a strong technical base. And now able to build a kind of "power plant": they will produce nuclear fuel and nuclear power to supply them all over the world. Working conditions in such enterprises are not only safer, more comfortable, but also attractive for staff with skills ».
It tokamak will become the main source of energy hybrid power. According to Academician Velikhov, Russia is able to develop a hybrid fusion reactor on its own ", together with about a hundred national organizations", in the event that for some reason will not be able to collaborate with colleagues from the international scientific community.
Source: geektimes.ru/post/243445/
