Speaker
Wolfgang Biel
(Institute for Energy and Climate Research IEK-4 (Plasma Physics))
Description
In the European strategy towards fusion electricity, a demonstration tokamak fusion reactor (DEMO) is foreseen as the single step between ITER and a fusion power plant. Recent studies have been focussing on the concept development for a “conservative” pulsed tokamak reactor with an electrical output power of Pel ~ 500 MW and plasma pulse duration of tpulse ~ 2 hours.
In the design process for DEMO, systems codes are commonly used as numerical tools for optimisation studies. Systems codes use a simplified but comprehensive description of the most important features of the plasma and of the main technical elements of the reactor, together with a number of boundary conditions and limitations from physics and technology, which altogether represent the current status of knowledge. The key performance data of the reactor such as electrical output power and plasma pulse duration are depending on a variety of design and plasma parameters such as plasma minor and major radius and shaping (elongation and triangularity), plasma density, safety factor, energy and particle confinement quality, auxiliary heating, impurity concentrations (plasma radiation), magnetic field strength and coil geometry, radial build (blanket thickness) and permissible wall and divertor loads. Within this multi-dimensional parameter space, different approaches can be used to define the goals of optimisation.
Within this paper, a systems code has been used to perform a variation of magnetic field, aspect ratio and confinement quality, for the case of tokamak reactors with Pel ~ 500 MW, to evaluate the effects on investment cost, plasma duration, divertor loads and other quantities, as compared to a reference case with tpulse ~ 2 hours. It is shown that, compared to the reference case, reactor designs with reduced divertor loads and significantly increased pulse duration can be achieved when accepting a moderate increase of investment cost.
Co-authors
Hartmut Zohm
(Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik, MPG, Garching, Germany)
Mitja Beckers
(Institute for Energy and Climate Research IEK-4 (Plasma Physics), Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH, Juelich, Germany)
Richard Kemp
(CCFE, Culham Science Centre, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 3DB, United Kingdom)
Ronald Wenninger
(EUROfusion Power Plant Physics and Technology (PPPT) department, EUROfusion, Garching, Germany)
Wolfgang Biel
(Institute for Energy and Climate Research IEK-4 (Plasma Physics), Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH, Juelich, Germany;Department of Applied Physics, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium)
