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c Conductors: The Compound YBCO
Published in David A. Cardwell, David C. Larbalestier, Aleksander I. Braginski, Handbook of Superconductivity, 2023
Of the various superconductor compounds which can be utilised for conductor applications, the rare earth barium cuprate phase, REBa2Cu3O7-x (REBCO, where RE is rare earth) has the greatest potential for achieving high current densities in magnetic fields for a wide range of applications. Three principal challenges for creating high performance conductors at low cost relate directly to the materials science and engineering challenges, namely: High angle grain boundaries between crystallites in the material do not support superconducting currents. Currently, the only way to overcome this is to create low angle grain boundaries using thin film epitaxy processing approaches.Nanoengineering of defects into crystallites is required to give strong pinning of magnetic vortices; andSpecial arrangements of conducting filaments within a conducting strand are required in order to reduce hysteretic losses in AC applications.
Transmission Electron Microscopy
Published in David A. Cardwell, David C. Larbalestier, Aleksander I. Braginski, Handbook of Superconductivity, 2022
As the nanostructural analyses indicate, the pinning force should be significantly enhanced if the pinning precipitates with the diameter of ∼2ξ continuously elongate along the field direction. Considering the geometrical anisotropy derived from the thin-film form and the fact that the crystallographic direction of REBCO normal to the tape plane is the c-axis along which Hc2 or Hirr is at least 5–6 times lower than along the ab plane, enhancement of pinning along such a direction is highly beneficial for practical uses of REBCO conductors in magnetic fields [25–27]. Indeed, the vortex pinning along the c-axis in REBCO CCs has been improved further by adding the BaZrO3 (BZO) nanorods [13, 16, 19, 26, 28].
Cost Drivers for a Tokamak-Based Compact Pilot Plant
Published in Fusion Science and Technology, 2021
To date, NB3Sn has been the preferred superconducting material for future tokamak reactor studies. This is largely due to the large experiential database that has been developed through R&D for the ITER project.16 In recent years, there has been increased interest in HTS magnets due to the potential for accessing operating regimes in magnetic field, superconducting temperature, and critical current density not possible with their low-critical-temperature superconducting (LTS) counterparts.17 Within the HTS technology space, there is considerable interest in REBCO tapes due to their ability to operate at high critical current density at very high magnetic field and elevated cryogenic temperatures. The potential for reducing the size of future power-producing tokamaks using REBCO tapes has been explored in recent publications.9,18,19
Fusion Blankets and Fluoride-Salt-Cooled High-Temperature Reactors with Flibe Salt Coolant: Common Challenges, Tritium Control, and Opportunities for Synergistic Development Strategies Between Fission, Fusion, and Solar Salt Technologies
Published in Nuclear Technology, 2020
Charles Forsberg, Guiqiu (Tony) Zheng, Ronald G. Ballinger, Stephen T. Lam
Recent advances in manufacturing have enabled the large-scale production of rare-earth barium copper oxide (REBCO) superconducting tape. This, in turn, has enabled the building of large magnets with double the magnetic field of previous large superconducting magnets. In magnetic fusion systems the system size scales as one over the fourth power of the magnetic field. Doubling the magnetic field can reduce the size of the fusion machine by an order of magnitude for the same power output resulting in a fusion machine where the power density increases by an order of magnitude with large reductions in cost per unit of power output. This is the basis for the ARC fusion concept.1,2 It is a one-time improvement. With REBCO magnets, the maximum magnetic fields that can be generated are limited by the strength of the materials holding the magnets together—not by the ability to generate magnetic fields. Figure 1a shows the conceptual design of the ARC. The ARC is the first fusion machine that proposes to use these new magnetic materials, but the expectation is that most future magnetic fusion systems will use REBCO or some future equivalent magnet material to reduce system size and cost.