Studies of conceptual spheromak fusion reactors

Abstract

Preliminary design studies are carried out for a spheromak fusion reactor. Simplified circuit theory is applied to obtain the characteristic relations among various parameters of the spheromak configuration for an aspect ratio of A ≳ 1.6. These relations are used to calculate the parameters for the conceptual designs of three types of fusion reactor: (1) the DT reactor with two-component-type operation, (2) the ignited DT reactor, and (3) the ignited catalysed-type DD reactor. With a total wall loading of ∼ 4 MW·m−2, it is found that edge magnetic fields of only ∼ 4 T (DT) and ∼ 9 T (Cat. DD) are required for ignited reactors of 1 m plasma (minor) radius with output powers in the gigawatt range. An assessment of various schemes of generation, compression and translation of spheromak plasmas is presented.