The neoclassical confinement and the bootstrap current are analysed in the configuration space of W7-X by self-consistent neoclassical transport simulations. Since the establishment of quasi-stationary operation is the most important goal for W7-X, the analysis concentrates on high-performance discharge scenarios in magnetic configurations which are adjusted so that bootstrap current vanishes, or, alternatively, on scenarios where the bootstrap current can be balanced by strong ECCD. Both scenarios lead to restrictions either in the configuration space or in plasma parameters and ECRH heating scenarios. Furthermore, the flexibility of the magnetic configuration space of W7-X is briefly described with emphasis on other physics topics of interest, for example, ballooning unstable configurations as well as configurations with a magnetic hill which might lead to interchange instability.
The two leading concepts for confining high-temperature fusion plasmas are the tokamak and the stellarator. Tokamaks are rotationally symmetric and use a large plasma current to achieve confinement, whereas stellarators are nonaxisymmetric and employ three-dimensionally shaped magnetic field coils to twist the field and confine the plasma. As a result, the magnetic field of a stellarator needs to be carefully designed to minimise the collisional transport arising from poorly confined particle orbits, which would otherwise cause excessive power losses at high plasma temperatures. In addition, this type of transport leads to the appearance of a net toroidal plasma current, the so-called bootstrap current. Here, we analyse results from the first experimental campaign of the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator, showing that its magnetic-field design allows good control of bootstrap currents and collisional transport. The energy confinement time is among the best ever achieved in stellarators both in absolute figures (E > 100ms) and relative to the stellarator confinement scaling. The bootstrap current responds as predicted to changes in the magnetic mirror ratio. These initial experiments confirm several theoretically predicted properties of W7-X plasmas, and already indicate consistency with optimisation measures.
One of the principal goals of the W7-X stellarator is to demonstrate good confinement of energetic ions at finite β. This confinement, however, is sensitive to the magnetic field configuration and is thus vulnerable to design modifications of the coil geometry. The collisionless drift orbit losses for 60 keV protons in W7-X are studied using the ANTS code. Particles in this energy range will be produced by the neutral beam injection (NBI) system being constructed for W7-X, and are particularly important because protons at this energy accurately mimick the behaviour of 3.5 MeV α-particles in a HELIAS reactor. To investigate the possibility of improved fast particle confinement, several approaches to adjust the coil currents (5 main field coil currents +2 auxiliary coil currents) were explored. These strategies include simple rules of thumb as well as computational optimization of various properties of the magnetic field. It is shown that significant improvement of collisionless fast particle confinement can be achieved in W7-X for particle populations similar to α particles produced in fusion reactions. Nevertheless, the experimental goal of demonstrating confinement improvement with rising plasma pressure using an NBI-generated population appears to be difficult based on optimization of the coil currents only. The principal reason for this difficulty is that the NBI deposition profile is broader than the region of good fast-ion confinement around the magnetic axis.
It is well known that optimisation of the MHD equilibrium of stellarators can have great influence on the performance and hence have a significant effect on the potential of stellarators as potential power plants. The ROSE code was written to carry out an optimisation based on an equilibrium evaluation using VMEC and several additional codes. This paper presents both a quasiaxially symmetric and a quasi-isodynamic equilibrium obtained with ROSE and demonstrates two important features that are new to stellarator optimisation. One allows the reduction of coil complexity by analysing a current sheet obtained with NESCOIL. The second is a new way of accounting for properties of the vacuum field while simultaneously optimising the finite beta equilibrium.
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