Talk:Magnetic confinement fusion

Comment

The links to citation number one seems to be missing.

I think it would be good to separate the definition of the various magnetic field geometries from their historical evolution. For example, it may be true that Spitzer's first stellarator was a figure eight, but twist supplied by currents external to the plasma is a better definition of what it means to be a stellarator. Similarly, just because the classic baseball seam coil has the max field gradient at one end at right angles to the max field gradient at the other end, doesn't make that the defining characteristic of the mirror. I suggest the taxonomy be laid out first, followed by historical examples. JohnAspinall 18:06, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

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Stellarator…

… “was a dead end”. Isn’t this a bit outdated with http://www.ipp.mpg.de/4413312/04_18 ? Maybe the article is quite outdated as a whole. --Dominique Meeùs (talk) 19:47, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

Expanding history section

Hi fellow wiki users.

I think we should move to outline the historical outlook on magnetic confinement fusion (MCF) devices. This could include challenges faced from each device/configuration as well as relative (time wise) technological implications.

I suggest the following outline:

- Early MCF fusion devices like pinch (theta and z) and pyrotrons. We could point out that the E x B drifts were a problem that resulting in a very low confinement time and thus necessitated changes to the flux surfaces.

- The stellarator modified pinch devices by adding a twist to the flux lines (originally by twisting the stellarator into a figure 8, but later by builting modular coil systems.

- The introduction of the tokamak in the 70s then brought about a similar idea of twisting the field lines, however in a much more simple way, as you could now have an axissymmetric device, making it a 2D problem rather than 3D with the stellarator and its modular field coils.

- This lead to many groups abandoning stellarator designs in favour of tokamaks (e.g., Princeton, even though Lyman Spitzer, the 'inventor' of the stellarator was there XD).

- However, since we were limited by the superconducting material technology for magnets, the highest field we could realistically achieve for the next 30 years was between 5-8 Tesla. This led to much of the research in the 80s onwards (even today) to be focused on improving performance through studying effects of *plasma parameters* shaping/impurities/h-mode/etc., as opposed to engineering parameters, like high field magnets.

- With the advent of commonwealths new high field magnets, we may see that many we achieve very good performance, even before we add the last decades of research in plasma parameter optimization. At the same time, ITER plans to make use of traditional magnets, and rely on the past decades of performance optimization, and is a more 'experimentally proven' path toward commercial fusion.

- As current driven instabilities from the tokamak can lead to possibly reactor destroying events (see possible runaway electron beam of 20 MA at ITER), renewed interest has arisen for stellarators, which lead to the building of Wendelstein 7X and the Large Helical Device.

- Much of the fusion technology that will enable MCF devices to become full fledge reactors still needs to be developed and tested, e.g., lithium blankets. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eddiekern (talk • contribs) 21:51, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

References