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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
The progress so far: An update on the Reactor Pilot Program
It has been about three months since the Department of Energy named 10 companies for its new Reactor Pilot Program, which maps out how the DOE would meet the goal announced by executive order in May of having three reactors achieve criticality by July 4, 2026.
M. R. Wade, T. C. Luce, J. Jayakumar, P. A. Politzer, C. C. Petty, M. Murakami, J. R. Ferron, A. W. Hyatt, A. C. C. Sips
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 48 | Number 2 | October 2005 | Pages 1199-1211
Technical Paper | DIII-D Tokamak - Advanced Tokamak Scenarios | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A1071
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Experiments in the DIII-D tokamak have demonstrated the ability to sustain ELMing H-mode discharges with high beta and good confinement quality under stationary conditions. These experiments have shown the ability to sustain normalized fusion performance (in terms of NH89P /q952) at or above that projected for Qfus = 10 operation in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) design over a wide range in operating parameters. In the best cases, operation is maintained at the free boundary, n = 1 stability limit. Confinement is found to be better than standard H-mode confinement scalings over a wide range in operation space, and experimentally measured transport is consistent with predictions from the GLF23 transport code. Projections using the standard ITER H-mode scaling laws based on these discharges indicate that Qfus = 5 can be maintained for >5400 s in ITER at q95 = 4.5 while Qfus = 40 can be obtained for ~2400 s at q95 = 3.2. These projected performance levels further validate the ITER design and suggest that long-pulse, high neutron fluence operation as well as very high fusion gain operation may be possible in next-generation tokamaks.