The Stellarator
MAGNETIC TOPOLOGY
The required internal magnetic fields and currents
of a stellarator are determined by the external
coil geometry. These external coils are not planar
but shaped to hold the plasma together without
the (net) toroidal plasma current required for the
tokamak configuration. The result is a more com-
plex 3-dimensional shape (the tokamak is axi-
symmetric, or 2-dimensional), but one that does
not suffer current-induced plasma disruptions.
ADVANTAGES
- No toroidal plasma current is required.
Current need not be induced with trans-
formers; thus steady-state operation is
inherent to the concept.
- The plasma does not disrupt, so there are no
disruption-induced structural forces.
EXPERIMENTS
- Stellarator research is funded at high
levels in Europe and Japan.
- Stellarator performance is close to that
of tokamaks.
Two stellarators in the $0.5-1 billion class.
STELLARATOR RESEARCH IS CURRENTLY UNDER WAY AT:
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee.
- Auburn University, Alabama.
- University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin.
- Australian National University, Australia.
- CIEMAT, Madrid, Spain.
- Kharkov Physico-Technical Institute, Ukraine.
- Kyoto Plasma Physics Laboratory, Japan.
- Institute of General Physics, Russia.
- Institute of Plasma Physics, Germany.
- National Institute for Fusion Science, Japan.