Speaker
Hiroshi Gota
(TAE Technologies, Inc.)
Description
TAE's research has been devoted to producing a high temperature, stable, long-lived field-reversed configuration (FRC) plasma state by neutral-beam injection (NBI) and edge biasing/control. C-2U experiments have demonstrated drastic improvements in particle and energy confinement properties of FRC's, and the plasma performance obtained via ~10 MW NBI has achieved plasma sustainment of up to 5 ms and plasma lifetimes of 10+ ms [1]. The emerging confinement scaling, whereby electron energy confinement time is proportional to a positive power of the electron temperature T_e, is very attractive for higher energy plasma confinement; accordingly, exploration of the observed scaling law at 10× higher T_e is one of the key research objectives.
TAE's new experimental device, C-2W (also called "Norman"; the world's largest compact-toroid device), has been constructed with the following key subsystem upgrades from C-2U: (i) higher injected power (up to ~21 MW), optimum and adjustable energies (15-40 keV), and extended pulse duration (up to ~30 ms) of the NBI system; (ii) installation of inner divertors with upgraded edge-biasing electrode systems, which allow for higher biasing voltage and longer pulse operation (30+ ms); (iii) increased overall stored energy in the FRC formation pulsed-power system; (iv) fast external equilibrium/mirror-coil current ramp-up capability for plasma ramp-up and control; (v) installation of trim/saddle coils for active feedback control of the FRC plasma; and (vi) enhanced overall diagnostic suite. A remarkable side note is the fact that TAE spent only ~1 year to construct the C-2W device and produce its first plasma. C-2W experiments have already produced a dramatically improved initial FRC state after translation and merging. As anticipated by design and also in our simulations, the merged initial FRC state exhibits much higher plasma temperatures (T_e >250 eV; total electron and ion temperature >1.5 keV) and more trapped flux, providing a very attractive target for effective NBI. Edge biasing/control experiments have also demonstrated stabilization of the FRC, thereby improving plasma confinement and prolonging FRC lifetime (up to ~10 ms), in which overall plasma performance is already equivalent to or better than that obtained in C-2U.
[1] H. Gota et al., Nucl. Fusion 57, 116021 (2017).
Country or International Organization | United States of America |
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Paper Number | OV/P-11 |
Primary author
Hiroshi Gota
(TAE Technologies, Inc.)
Co-authors
Dr
Alan Van Drie
(TAE Technologies, Inc.)
Prof.
Alexander Ivanov
(BINP)
Dr
Artem Smirnov
(TAE Technologies, Inc.)
Dr
Bihe Deng
(TAE Technologies, Inc.)
Dr
Deepak Gupta
(TAE Technologies, Inc.)
Dr
Erik Trask
(TAE Technologies, Inc.)
Dr
Jesus Romero
(TAE Technologies, Inc.)
Dr
Kan Zhai
(TAE Technologies, Inc.)
Dr
Loren Steinhauer
(TAE Technologies, Inc.)
Dr
Lothar Schmitz
(UCLA)
Dr
Matthew Thompson
(TAE Technologies, Inc.)
Dr
Michel Tuszewski
(TAE Technologies, Inc.)
Dr
Michl Binderbauer
(TAE Technologies, Inc.)
Dr
Peter Yushmanov
(TAE Technologies, Inc.)
Dr
Richard Magee
(TAE Technologies, Inc.)
Dr
Sean Dettrick
(TAE Technologies, Inc.)
Dr
Sergei Putvinski
(TAE Technologies, Inc.)
Dr
Sergey Korepanov
(TAE Technologies, Inc.)
Dr
Thomas Roche
(TAE Technologies, Inc.)
Prof.
Tomohiko Asai
(Nihon University)
Dr
Toshiki Tajima
(TAE Technologies, Inc.)
Dr
Vladimir Sokolov
(TAE Technologies, Inc.)
Dr
Xiaokang Yang
(TAE Technologies, Inc.)
Dr
Yuanxu Song
(TAE Technologies, Inc.)
Prof.
Zhihong Lin
(UC Irvine)