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Fusion energy: Progress, partnerships, and the path to deployment
Over the past decade, fusion energy has moved decisively from scientific aspiration toward a credible pathway to a new energy technology. Thanks to long-term federal support, we have significantly advanced our fundamental understanding of plasma physics—the behavior of the superheated gases at the heart of fusion devices. This knowledge will enable the creation and control of fusion fuel under conditions required for future power plants. Our progress is exemplified by breakthroughs at the National Ignition Facility and the Joint European Torus.
Yong Liu, Enyao Wang, Xuantong Ding, Longwen Yan, Shangjie Qian, Jiancheng Yan
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 42 | Number 1 | July 2002 | Pages 94-101
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A215
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Experimental progress with the HL-1M tokamak has been made in many areas including confinement improvement, auxiliary heating, plasma fueling, and wall conditionings. An H-mode induced by a biased electrode was obtained with the formation of an internal transport barrier at the region of r/a ~ 0.4 to 0.5. Confinement improvement by lower-hybrid current drive (LHCD) was extensively investigated. Confinement improvement seems to be related to the production of the radial electron field during LHCD. In off-axis electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH), double sawteeth in soft X-ray radiation were observed, which implies that reversed magnetic shear could be formed during ECRH. At higher ECRH power, when the resonance position is near the q = 1 surface, fishbone instability was observed and investigated. An eight-shot pellet injector was used for the experiments. The pellet ablation process was investigated with a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera and an H emission detector array. Clearly, asymmetry in the pellet cloud was observed in both the toroidal and poloidal directions. It has been found that the pellet velocity slows down clearly after the pellet enters the plasma. The density limit has been investigated on HL-1M at different wall conditionings with three kinds of fueling methods. It was found that a higher density limit could be achieved under the following conditions: (a) a strong reduction of the impurity content after siliconization and (b) a peaked density profile with pellet injection and/or supersonic molecular beam injection. With a neutral beam injection (NBI) system of 1 MW, preliminary results of NBI experiments were obtained with an increase of ion temperature from 450 to 700 eV.