MAJOR FACILITIES
ITER
(Latin for "the way") is a critical step between
today’s studies of plasma physics and tomorrow’s
fusion power plants producing electricity and
hydrogen. An unprecedented international
collaboration of scientists and engineers led to
the design of this advanced physics experiment.
Project partners are China, the European Union,
India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United
States. ITER is technically ready to start
construction, with experimental operations planned
to begin in approximately 10 years. The site
selected for the project is Cadarache, in
southeastern France. ITER is expected to
operate for 20 years, and to demonstrate production
of at least 10
times the power used to heat the fusion fuel. For
more information, please click
here.
The DIII-D
tokamak operated by General Atomics in San Diego,
CA is the largest magnetic fusion facility in the
United States. DIII-D provides for considerable
experimental flexibility and has extensive
diagnostic instrumentation to measure the
properties of high temperature plasmas. It also
has unique capabilities to shape the plasma and
provide feedback control of error fields that, in
turn, affect particle transport and the stability
of the plasma. In addition, DIII-D has been a
major contributor to the world fusion program over
the past decade in the areas of plasma turbulence,
energy transport, boundary layer physics, and
electron-cyclotron plasma heating and current
drive. For more information, please click
here.
NSTX
(the National Spherical Torus Experiment) is an
innovative magnetic fusion device that was
constructed by the Princeton Plasma Physics
Laboratory (PPPL) in collaboration with the Oak
Ridge National Laboratory, Columbia University,
and the University of Washington at Seattle. It
produces a plasma that is shaped like a sphere
with a hole through its center, different from the
"donut" shaped plasmas of conventional tokamaks.
This configuration may have several advantages, a
major one being the ability to confine a higher
plasma pressure for a given magnetic field
strength, which could enable the development of
smaller, more economical fusion reactors.
For more information, please click
here.
Alcator C-Mod
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is
the only tokamak in the world operating at and
above the ITER design magnetic field and plasma
densities, and it produces the highest pressure
tokamak plasma in the world, approaching pressures
expected in ITER. It is also unique in the use of
all-metal walls to accommodate high power
densities. Because of these characteristics, C-Mod
is particularly well suited to examine plasma
regimes that are highly relevant to ITER. The
facility has made significant contributions to the
world fusion program in the areas of plasma
heating and current drive, stability, and
confinement in high field tokamaks. For more
information, please click
here.
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