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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Nuclear energy: The decade of deliverability
Despite the emergence of new projects, technologies, and commercial ventures, the rate of actual deployment worldwide has been relatively slow—but not necessarily for the reasons people might think.
H. J. de Blank
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 61 | Number 2 | February 2012 | Pages 89-95
Equilibrium and Instabilities | Proceedings of the Tenth Carolus Magnus Summer School on Plasma and Fusion Energy Physics | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A13495
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This lecture treats the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equilibrium of axisymmetric plasmas, as given by the Grad-Shafranov equation. In a brief introduction, equilibrium parameters such as the q-profile, the internal inductance, and the poloidal beta are introduced. The properties of these quantities will be illustrated in the case of the tokamak, by applying the large aspect ratio tokamak approximation. The properties of a non-circular plasma cross-section and the role of the vertical field will also be discussed in this approximation. Some attention is given to the (numerical) problem of solving the equilibrium equation and of reconstructing a plasma equilibrium from external measurements.