Progress Towards Burning Plasmas

Abstract

The next frontier for fusion science is the study of burning plasmas. The international ITER facility will advance research efforts into this new regime. In this paper we will first define burning plasmas and describe their distinctive features. One such feature is dominant self-heating (exothermic) by a large population of alpha particles, created from thermonuclear reactions. Next, we will briefly review how previous experiments on JET and TFTR to attain breakeven have laid the foundation for taking the present step to ITER. Then, we will describe various physics and technology issues that need to be addressed for burning plasmas. In addition to the scientific opportunities, we will also describe how ITER, being operated as a large-scale international project, is making progress in terms of organization, mission, funding, and programmatic coordination worldwide.

Energetic-ion excited internal kink modes with weak magnetic shear in ${{\boldsymbol{q}}}_{0}\gt 1$ tokamak plasmas

“…Plasma heating and current drive are key issues towards burning plasma. [1] Neutral beam injection (NBI), ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH), low hybrid current drive (LHCD), and nuclear fusion reaction not only heat the plasma or drive plasma current efficiently, but also produce a new population of plasma species: energetic particles (EPs). [2][3][4] The EP physics in fusion plasmas has been investigated extensively due to widely applied auxiliary heating and profile control in recent decades.…”