ITER conceptual design

Abstract

The Conceptual Design Activities of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) were carried out jointly by the European Community, Japan, the Soviet Union and the United States of America, under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The European Community provided the site for joint work sessions at the Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik in Garching, Germany. The Conceptual Design Activities began in the spring of 1988 and ended in December 1990. The objectives of the activities were to develop the design of ITER, to perform a safety and environmental analysis, to define the site requirements as well as the future research and development needs, to estimate the cost and manpower, and to prepare a schedule for detailed engineering design, construction and operation. On the basis of the investigation and analysis performed, a concept of ITER was developed which incorporated maximum flexibility of the performance of the device and allowed a variety of operating scenarios to be adopted. The heart of the machine is a tokamak having a plasma major radius of 6 m, a plasma minor radius of 2.15 m, a nominal plasma current of 22 MA and a nominal fusion power of 1 GW. The conceptual design can meet the technical objectives of the ITER programme. Because of the success of the Conceptual Design Activities, the Parties are now considering the implementation of the next phase, called the Engineering Design Activities.

Impurity behavior during sawtooth activity in tokamak plasmas

“…After transferring their power, He ash must be continuously extracted, otherwise fuel dilution causes the fusion efficiency to decrease until the reactions stop. Since the pumps are located under the divertor plates 9 and He is produced in the core, there must be some mechanism to efficiently transport it from the core to the edge of the plasma. Sawteeth have been proposed as a possible mechanism for such a transport 10,11 in the q < 1 region, while turbulence is supposed to take over in the q > 1 region.…”

Concept design of the CFETR central solenoid

“…The major design parameters of CFETR compared to ITER are given in Table 1 [3][4][5]. The most significant goal of CFETR is to get the steady-state in high-performance plasma.…”

Physics of Alfvén Waves

“…Alfvén waves, thus, have been proposed as the mechanism for the solar corona heating [2]. Meanwhile, rapid loss of energetic/alpha particles due to Alfvén wave instabilities is a major issue of concern in burning fusion plasmas, such as ITER [3,4].…”