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Stellarator Research Opportunities: A Report of the National Stellarator Coordinating Committee

Journal Article · · Journal of Fusion Energy
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  1. Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
  2. Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)
  3. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  4. New York Univ. (NYU), NY (United States)
  5. Univ. of Illinois, Urbana, IL (United States)
  6. Auburn Univ., AL (United States)
  7. Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States)
  8. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
  9. Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)
  10. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
  11. Xantho Technologies, Madison, WI (United States)
  12. Univ. of Montana, Missoula, MT (United States)
  13. General Atomics, San Diego, CA (United States)
  14. Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
  15. Fusion Theory & Computation, Inc., Kingston, WA (United States)

This paper is the product of a stellarator community workshop, organized by the National Stellarator Coordinating Committee and referred to as Stellcon, that was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts in February 2016, hosted by MIT. The workshop was widely advertised, and was attended by 40 scientists from 12 different institutions including national labs, universities and private industry, as well as a representative from the Department of Energy. The final section of this document describes areas of community wide consensus that were developed as a result of the discussions held at that workshop. Areas where further study would be helpful to generate a consensus path forward for the US stellarator program are also discussed. The program outlined in this document is directly responsive to many of the strategic priorities of FES as articulated in “Fusion Energy Sciences: A Ten-Year Perspective (2015–2025)” [1]. The natural disruption immunity of the stellarator directly addresses “Elimination of transient events that can be deleterious to toroidal fusion plasma confinement devices” an area of critical importance for the US fusion energy sciences enterprise over the next decade. Another critical area of research “Strengthening our partnerships with international research facilities,” is being significantly advanced on the W7-X stellarator in Germany and serves as a test-bed for development of successful international collaboration on ITER. Finally, this report also outlines how materials science as it relates to plasma and fusion sciences, another critical research area, can be carried out effectively in a stellarator. Additionally, significant advances along two of the Research Directions outlined in the report; “Burning Plasma Science: Foundations—Next-generation research capabilities”, and “Burning Plasma Science: Long pulse—Sustainment of Long-Pulse Plasma Equilibria” are proposed.

Research Organization:
Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Fusion Energy Sciences (FES)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-09CH11466; AC05-00OR22725
OSTI ID:
1429036
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1648941
Journal Information:
Journal of Fusion Energy, Journal Name: Journal of Fusion Energy Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 37; ISSN 0164-0313
Publisher:
SpringerCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Initial Exploration of High-Field Pulsed Stellarator Approach to Ignition Experiments journal October 2018
Stellarator microinstabilities and turbulence at low magnetic shear journal October 2018
A comparison of turbulent transport in a quasi-helical and a quasi-axisymmetric stellarator journal September 2019
Stellarator equilibria with reactor relevant energetic particle losses journal October 2019
Nuclear Assessment to Support ARIES Power Plants and Next-Step Facilities: Emerging Challenges and Lessons Learned journal August 2018
First demonstration of radiative power exhaust with impurity seeding in the island divertor at Wendelstein 7-X journal August 2019

Figures / Tables (11)