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The biggest question in my mind about the ARC proposal is how well these new superconductors stand up to radiation. This is a concern for ITER as well, which uses more traditional superconductors. The ARC team is looking into it, but I'm going to remain unenthusiastic about ARC until they've really proven out the concept.

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Around 33 minutes into the presentation he does address radiation briefly, noting that it's favorable because most of the issues relate to the ceramic insulators in traditional SC magnets. In their design, the steel structural component of the tape serves as the insulator; they just wind up the SC tape and the current travels along that 1um SC layer.

More generally, the demountable coils suggests that designs could be made where the magnets are replaceable with some degree of economy.

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