Fusion Fire Powers the Sun

Can we make Fusion Fire on earth?

National FIRE CollaborationAES, ANL, Boeing, Columbia U., CTD, GA, GIT, LLNL, INEEL, MIT, ORNL, PPPL, SNL, SRS, UCLA, UCSD, UIIC, UWisc

I want you to develop fusion fire for the world.

Two Furnaces for Testing a Fusion Fire

ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor)• (see display in Lobby)• Six party international partnership (JA,EU,RF,US,CN,ROK)• To be built in Japan or France (Cost > $5B)• Under negotiation ( decision expected by July 2004)

FIRE (Fusion Ignition Research Experiment)• Lowest cost approach for studying science of fusion fire• International Collaboration lead by the US• To be built in the US (Cost ~ $1B)• Under design as back up, put forward if no ITER decision

ITER and FIRE are each attractive options for the study of burning

plasma science. Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee 2003

FIRE Would Test Confinement Similar to Power Plant

• Tokamaks have established a solid basis for scaling confine-ment of the diverted H-Mode.

• BE is the dimensionless metric for confinement time projection

• nET is the dimensional metric for fusion - nET = B2E = B . BE

• FIRE only needs to increase confinement BE by 2.5 !!!

• ARIES-RS Power Plants require BE slightly larger than FIRE due high and B.

Power Plant (Q = 25)

Characteristics of the FIRE Furnace

• 40% scale model of ARIES-RS plasma

• Strong shaping x = 2, x = 0.7, DN

• All metal plasma facing components

• Actively cooled tungsten divertor

• Be tile FW, cooled between shots

• T required/pulse ~ TFTR ≤ 0.3g-T

• LN cooled BeCu/OFHC toroidal B coil

• no inboard nt shield, allows small size

• 3,000 pulses @ full field

• 30,000 pulses @ 2/3 field

• 1 shot/hr @10T/20s/150 MW

• Site needs comparable to previous

DT tokamaks (TFTR/JET).

FIRE Parameters

Major Radius = 2.14 m, Minor Radius = 0.595 m

Plasma volume = 27 m3

Magnetic Field = 6.5 - 10 T, Plasma Current = 5 - 7.7 MA

Fusion Power = 150 - 300 MW, 5 - 10 MWm-3

Fusion Plasma Power Gain, Q = 10

Duration = 20 - 40 s (sufficient to study fusion fire science)

Cost = $350 M (tokamak core) + $850M (aux & support)

Computer Simulation of Fusion Fire is Needed

Fusion fires are complex, non-linear and strongly-coupled systems.

• highly self driven (83% self-heated, 90% self-driven current) plasmas are needed for economic power plant scenarios.

• Does a fusion fire naturally evolve to a self-driven state?

A capability to simulation fusion fire would be of great benefit to:

• Understand fusion fire phenomena based on existing exp’ts

• Refine the physics and engineering design for fusion fire exp’ts

• Provide real time control algorithm for self-driven fusion fire, and to optimize experimental operation

• Analyze the fusion fire experimental results and transfer knowledge.

QuickTime™ and aMPEG-4 Video decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Concluding Remarks

Magnetic Fusion has made steady progress during the past decades and has achieved:

• fusion fuel temperatures of 500 million degrees C (TFTR)• fusion power production of 10 million watts (TFTR)• fuel density x confinement ≈ 50% of fusion fire (TFTR)• first fusion fuel heating by fusion fire (TFTR)

More important than ever to find out if fusion can be an energy source for the world.

Magnetic Fusion is now poised to take the crucial step of:• building and testing a fusion fire in the Laboratory• two attractive options (ITER and FIRE) are available• decisions are expected within months

Thanks for your interest. More info at http://fire.pppl.gov