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From SPARC to ARC: CFS prepares for a first-of-a-kind fusion plant
Commonwealth Fusion Systems makes no small plans. The company wants to build a 400-MWe magnetic confinement fusion power plant called ARC near Richmond, Va., and begin operating it in the early 2030s. And the plans don’t end there. CFS wants to deploy “thousands” of fusion power plants capable of accelerating a global energy transition.
Cheng Zhang*, Francesco Romanelli
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 25 | Number 2 | March 1994 | Pages 147-163
Technical Paper | Plasma Heating System | doi.org/10.13182/FST94-A30264
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An analysis of the neutral beam (NB) current drive for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is performed. The NB deposition profile for a model elliptic equilibrium is evaluated for arbitrary density profiles. Multistep ionization is accounted for. The NB current density is calculated by using an approximate solution of the Fokker-Planck equation. A parameter scan is performed by changing electron density, plasma temperature, the plasma effective ionic charge Zeff, beam energy Eb, beam mass number, beam section, and tangency radius of the beam center. The largest values of the current drive figure of merit γNB = INBnR/P are obtained for the largest beam energy. The obtained value of γNB for the ITER reference scenario is γNB = 0.6 for Eb = 1.3 MeV and Zeff = 2.