Progress In Research On Open - Ended Magnetic Traps

Journal Article · Sun Jan 15 00:00:00 EST 2006 · AIP Conference Proceedings

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2168790· OSTI ID:20797943

Kruglyakov, E P; Burdakov, A V; Ivanov, A A ^[1]

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1. Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics, 630090, Novosibirsk (Russian Federation)

At present, three modern types of mirror machines for plasma confinement and heating exist in Novosibirsk (Multi-mirror,-GOL-3, Gas Dynamic Trap,-GDT, and Tandem Mirror,- AMBAL-M). From the engineering point of view all these systems are very attractive because of simple axisymmetric geometry of magnetic configurations. In this paper, the status of GOL-3 and GDT machines is presented. The most crucial experiments for the mirror concept are described such as a demonstration of different principles of suppression of longitudinal electron heat conductivity (GDT, GOL-3), finding of MHD stable regimes of confinement of high {beta} (more than 0.4) plasma in axisymmetric geometry of magnetic field, an effective heating of a dense plasma (of order of 10 21 m-3) by high current relativistic electron beam (GOL-3), etc. In the case of multi-mirror geometry (GOL-3) significant increase of confinement time of hot plasma (up to several tens times) was obtained in comparison with single mirror geometry. Besides, electron heating (up to 2 keV) in result of high current electron beam -- plasma interaction, the heating of ions (up to 2 keV) was discovered in the multi-mirror geometry (55 mirror cells with total length of the trap equal to 12 meters). There was no any effect of ion heating in the single mirror geometry. The reasons of appearance of the ion heating in multi-mirror geometry are discussed. It should be mentioned that on the basis of the GOL-3 and GDT one can obtain an important information for ITER and for future fusion program. In the case of GOL-3 the longitudinal energy density flux of plasma after heating by REB can be so high as 50 MJ/m2. A lot of experiments can be made on plasma-wall interaction (evaporation, erosion and ionization of wall material, propagation of the impurity ions along magnetic field lines at long distances, etc). Some of these experiments are described in this paper. Using principle of confinement of 'warm' collisional plasma placed in gas dynamic trap (GDT) together with oblique injection of fast atoms of D and T one can create a powerful 14 MeV neutron source for constructed materials tests of future fusion reactors with a moderate irradiation area (about 1 square meter) and, accordingly, with low tritium consumption. It should be mentioned that there is no one candidate to the plasma based neutron source with such moderate consumption of tritium (about 150 gram/year) and electric power (60 MW). The experimental results with NB injection of 4 MW are described and the experiments of the next step (GDT-U) with 10 MW injection are discussed.

• OSTI ID: 20797943
• Journal Information: AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 812, Issue 1; Conference: PLASMA 2005: International conference on research and applications of plasmas; 3. German-Polish conference on plasma diagnostics for fusion and applications; 5. French-Polish seminar on thermal plasma in space and laboratory, Opole-Turawa (Poland), 6-9 Sep 2005; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.2168790; (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0094-243X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
AXIAL SYMMETRY
COLLISIONAL PLASMA
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
CONFINEMENT TIME
ELECTRON BEAMS
ELECTRONS
ENERGY DENSITY
GEOMETRY
GOL-3 DEVICE
HOT PLASMA
IONIZATION
IONS
ITER TOKAMAK
KEV RANGE
MAGNETIC FIELDS
MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMICS
MEV RANGE
NEUTRON SOURCES
PLASMA CONFINEMENT
PLASMA HEATING
PLASMA IMPURITIES
RELATIVISTIC RANGE
TANDEM MIRRORS
TRAPS
TRITIUM
WALL EFFECTS