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Towards An Attractive Fusion Power Plant

This forum discusses the progress of fusion power plant research and explores the development of a commercially viable and safe fusion power plant that meets top-level requirements. The ARIES team has examined various power plants, including tokamaks and non-tokamak designs. Key criteria for a commercial power plant have been determined through collaboration with US electric utilities and industry representatives. The focus is on designing a plant that requires no public evacuation plan, generates minimal radioactive waste, maintains operational reliability, and operates with a closed tritium fuel cycle. The discussion also highlights the need for improving tokamak designs through higher-performance technologies and pursuing alternatives like the spherical tokamak and the reversed-field pinch. The ultimate goal is to continuously enhance fusion power plant designs and promote effective communication of these advancements to the public.

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Towards An Attractive Fusion Power Plant

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  1. Towards An Attractive Fusion Power Plant Farrokh Najmabadi Forum on Next Step Device April 27, May 1, 1998 U. Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin

  2. The ARIES Team Has Examined Several Tokamak and non-Tokamak Power Plants in the Past 10 Years • TITAN reversed-field pinch (1988) • ARIES-I first-stability tokamak (1990) • ARIES-III D-3He-fueled tokamak (1991) • ARIES-II and -IV second-stability tokamaks (1992) • Pulsar pulsed-plasma tokamak (1993) • SPPS stellarator (1994) • Starlite study (1995) • ARIES-RS reversed-shear tokamak (1996) • ARIES-ST spherical tokamak (in progress)

  3. Top-Level Requirements for Commercial Power Plant Were Developed through Interaction with Representatives from US Electric Utilities & Industry 1) No public evacuation plan required: Total does < 1 rem at site boundary 2) No radioactive material generated with waste category greater than Class C 3) No disturbance of public’s day-to-day activities 4) No exposure of workers to a higher risk than other power plants 5) Closed tritium fuel cycle 6) Ability to operate at partial load condition (50%) 7) Ability to maintain power core 8) Ability to operate reliably with < 0.1 major unscheduled shut-down/year

  4. Our Vision of Tokamaks Has Improved Drastically in the Last Decade

  5. Direction for Improvement of Product • Push the concepts to the limit • For example, for ARIES-RS reduce COE by about 10%: • assume perfect bootstrap alignment, and operation at the maximum theoretical b. • This is a trade-off of credibility with performance

  6. More Efficient Confinement System • No superconducting TF coils • Spherical tokamaks (ARIES-ST): Potential for high performance and small size devices for fusion research but requires high beta and perfect bootstrap alignment. Center-post is a challenge. • RFP (TITAN): Simple magnets and potential for high performance. Steady-state operation requires resolution of the conflict between current-drive and confinement. • No current-drive: • Stellarators (SPPS): recent advances bring the size in-line with advanced tokamaks. Needs coils and components with complicated geometry.

  7. High-Performance Technology • ARIES-I design explored improved performance through higher-performance technologies: • Cheap, high-field magnets. Note b2B4 scaling, • A “coal-like” fusion core, i.e., no nuclear-stamped components. • Higher performance and/or cheaper fusion core components results in dramatic improvement in our products: • It requires extensive fusion engineering sciences R&D.

  8. Summary • Fusion has an attractive product at this stage of its development. • History of fusion research shows improvement of our product through coordinated R&D. • Problem: How to communicate this to outside. • We have to continuously strive to improve our products by • Pursuing “better tokamks” or alternatives • Pursuing higher performance and cheaper technologies. • Detailed integrated conceptual design help define the trade-off and point to directions for high-leverage R&D.

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