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Title: Innovative approaches towards an economic fusion reactor

Abstract

Nuclear fusion potentially offers a clean, environmentally friendly and intrinsically safe energy source with an abundant fuel supply. Magnetic fusion energy research is approaching a new era of fusion power reactor design and cons-truction planning. New physics understanding and powerful predictive tools have become available for improving fusion performance, developing and optimizing various magnetic confinement concepts. Emerging transformative enabling technologies can potentially mitigate and transform some present physics challenges from the possibly insurmountable to the potentially solvable.

Authors:
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [1];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [7];  [4];  [1];  [5]
  1. General Atomics, San Diego, CA (United States)
  2. Breakthrough Fusion International Corporation (United States); Xi'an Jiaotong Univ., Shaanxi (China)
  3. Tri Alpha Energy, Foothill Ranch, CA (United States)
  4. Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States)
  5. Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
  6. Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)
  7. Univ. of Toronto, ON (Canada)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE
OSTI Identifier:
1631039
Grant/Contract Number:  
AC02-09CH11466
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
National Science Review
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 7; Journal Issue: 2; Journal ID: ISSN 2095-5138
Publisher:
China Science Publishing
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY

Citation Formats

Guo, Houyang, Thio, Francis Y. C., Binderbauer, Michl W., Buttery, Richard J., Jarboe, Thomas R., Maingi, Rajesh, Sarff, John S., Stangeby, Peter C., Sutherland, Derek A., Wade, Mickey R., and Zarnstorff, Michael C. Innovative approaches towards an economic fusion reactor. United States: N. p., 2019. Web. doi:10.1093/nsr/nwz162.
Guo, Houyang, Thio, Francis Y. C., Binderbauer, Michl W., Buttery, Richard J., Jarboe, Thomas R., Maingi, Rajesh, Sarff, John S., Stangeby, Peter C., Sutherland, Derek A., Wade, Mickey R., & Zarnstorff, Michael C. Innovative approaches towards an economic fusion reactor. United States. https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwz162
Guo, Houyang, Thio, Francis Y. C., Binderbauer, Michl W., Buttery, Richard J., Jarboe, Thomas R., Maingi, Rajesh, Sarff, John S., Stangeby, Peter C., Sutherland, Derek A., Wade, Mickey R., and Zarnstorff, Michael C. Wed . "Innovative approaches towards an economic fusion reactor". United States. https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwz162. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1631039.
@article{osti_1631039,
title = {Innovative approaches towards an economic fusion reactor},
author = {Guo, Houyang and Thio, Francis Y. C. and Binderbauer, Michl W. and Buttery, Richard J. and Jarboe, Thomas R. and Maingi, Rajesh and Sarff, John S. and Stangeby, Peter C. and Sutherland, Derek A. and Wade, Mickey R. and Zarnstorff, Michael C.},
abstractNote = {Nuclear fusion potentially offers a clean, environmentally friendly and intrinsically safe energy source with an abundant fuel supply. Magnetic fusion energy research is approaching a new era of fusion power reactor design and cons-truction planning. New physics understanding and powerful predictive tools have become available for improving fusion performance, developing and optimizing various magnetic confinement concepts. Emerging transformative enabling technologies can potentially mitigate and transform some present physics challenges from the possibly insurmountable to the potentially solvable.},
doi = {10.1093/nsr/nwz162},
journal = {National Science Review},
number = 2,
volume = 7,
place = {United States},
year = {2019},
month = {10}
}

Journal Article:
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record

Figures / Tables:

Figure 1 Figure 1: A potential dual-path approach towards an economic fusion reactor leveraging physics and engineering innovations: (1) Advanced magnetic confinement, relying on toroidal field magnet systems, including tokamak, stellarator and reversed field pinch (RFP), led by the tokamak; (2) Simplified magnetic topology, such as field reversed configuration (FRC) and spheromak,more » as well as magneto-inertial fusion (MIF), which are much less mature than the mainline tokamak approach; breakthroughs are needed to reach a similar technical readiness level to that for the advanced group.« less

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Figures / Tables found in this record:

    Figures/Tables have been extracted from DOE-funded journal article accepted manuscripts.