In the quest for new energy sources, the research on controlled thermonuclear fusion 1 has been boosted by the start of the construction phase of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). ITER is based on the tokamak magnetic configuration 3, which is the best performing one in terms of energy confinement. Alternative concepts are however actively researched, which in the long term could be considered for a second generation of reactors. Here, we show results concerning one of these configurations, the reversed-field pinch 4,5 (RFP). By increasing the plasma current, a spontaneous transition to a helical equilibrium occurs, with a change of magnetic topology. Partially conserved magnetic flux surfaces emerge within residual magnetic chaos, resulting in the onset of a transport barrier. This is a structural change and sheds new light on the potential of the RFP as the basis for a low-magnetic-field ohmic fusion reactor.The main magnetic field configurations studied for the confinement of toroidal fusion-relevant plasmas are the tokamak 3 , the stellarator 6 and the reversed-field pinch 4,5 (RFP). In the tokamak, a strong magnetic field is produced in the toroidal direction by a set of coils approximating a toroidal solenoid, and the poloidal field generated by a toroidal current flowing into the plasma gives the field lines a weak helical twist. This is the configuration that has been most studied and has achieved the best levels of energy confinement time. Thus, it is the natural choice for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, which has the mission of demonstrating the scientific and technical feasibility of controlled fusion with magnetic confinement.The RFP, like the tokamak, is axisymmetric and exploits the pinch effect due to a current flowing in a plasma embedded in a toroidal magnetic field. The main difference is that, for a given plasma current, the toroidal magnetic field in a RFP is one order of magnitude smaller than in a tokamak, and is mainly generated by currents flowing in the plasma itself. This feature is underlying the main potential advantage of the RFP as a reactor concept, namely the capability of achieving fusion conditions with ohmic heating only in a much simpler and compact device. In the past, this positive feature was overcome by the poorer stability properties, which led to the growth and saturation of several magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities, eventually downgrading the confinement performance. These instabilities, represented by Fourier modes in the poloidal and toroidal angles θ and φ as exp [i(mθ − nφ) were considered as an unavoidable ingredient of the dynamo self-organization process 4,8,9 , necessary for the sustainment of the configuration in time. The occurrence of several MHD modes resonating on different plasma layers gives rise to overlapping magnetic islands, which result in a chaotic region, extending over most of the plasma volume 10 , where the magnetic surfaces are destroyed and the confinement level is modest. This conditi...

The ITER neutral beam injectors are the first injectors to be designed to operate under conditions and constraints similar to those that will be encountered with a fusion reactor. The injectors will use a single large ion source and accelerator that will produce 40 A D(-) 1 MeV beams for pulse lengths of up to 3600 s. The accelerated ion beams will be neutralized in a gas (D(2)) neutralizer which is subdivided into four vertical channels to reduce the gas flow into the injectors that is needed to produce optimum target for neutralization. These injectors will have to operate in a hostile radiation environment and they will become highly radioactive due to the neutron flux from ITER. The design has been modified recently to have a rectangular vacuum vessel with a removable lid that allows vertical access to, and maintenance of, the beamline components, the incorporation of an absolute all metal valve at the exit of the injector, the choice of a rf driven ion source as the reference design of ion source, and to have a high voltage deck incorporating the various auxiliary power supplies in air rather that under high pressure SF(6). A major development is that it has been agreed that a Neutral Beam Test Facility (NBTF) will be set up at Padua, Italy. The NBTF will consist of two test beds: one of which will be capable of operating a complete injector at full performance. The second will be an ion source test bed, which will be used for the development and testing, to full performance, of the large negative ion source.

The rescaled range analysis techniques are used to investigate long-range dependence in plasma edge fluctuations [Mandelbrot and Wallis, Water Resources Res. 4, 909 (1969)]. This technology has been applied to data from several confinement devices such as tokamaks, stellarators, and reversed-field pinch. The results reveal the self-similar character of the electrostatic fluctuations at the plasma edge with self-similarity parameters ranging from 0.62 to 0.72. These results show that the tail of the autocorrelation function decays as a power law for time lags longer than the decorrelation time and as long as times of the order of the confinement time. In cold plasma devices (Te<1 eV at the core), there is no evidence of algebraic tails in the autocorrelation function. Some other characteristic features of the autocorrelation function and power spectrum have been investigated. All of these features are consistent with plasma transport as characterized by self-organized criticality.

The MHD current driven instabilities of Reversed Field Pinch (RFP) configurations are analysed for a plasma in contact with a perfectly conducting wall. The equilibrium distributions are obtained on the basis of a model which allows a parametric variation of the value of the safety factor on the axis, q(0), and of the current density distribution. – The RFP is found to be stable in a wide range of parameters. However, when the toroidal field reversal becomes too deep, unstable modes, resonant outside the reversal surface, are found in analogy to the stability limit at θ = 1.56 for the Taylor's theoretical, fully relaxed states. Nevertheless, it is shown that these modes are not very significant in that they arise in a region of the parameters space which is only rarely approached in experiments. On the other hand, for peaked current density distributions, new unstable tearing and kink modes are found when q(0) drops below the limit q(0) ≈ 2a/(3R). These modes are resonant inside the reversal surface and may include the mode resonant on the axis. – The results of the MHD stability for the internal modes and in particular the limit on the value of q on axis that has been found are discussed in connection with experimental observations on mean field profiles and related oscillations.

No abstract