Principles of magnetic confinement

Confinement physics

Magnetic confinement of plasmas is the most highly developed approach to controlled fusion. A large part of the problem of fusion has been the attainment of magnetic field configurations that effectively confine the plasma. A successful configuration must meet three criteria: (1) the plasma must be in a time-independent equilibrium state, (2) the equilibrium must be macroscopically stable, and (3) the leakage of plasma energy to the bounding wall must be small.

Charged particles tend to spiral about a magnetic line of force. It is necessary that these particle trajectories do not intersect the bounding wall. Simultaneously, the thermal energy of all the particles exerts an expansive pressure force on the plasma. For the plasma to be in equilibrium, the magnetic force acting on the electric current within the plasma must balance the pressure force at every point in the plasma.

This equilibrium must be stable, which is to say that the plasma will return to its original state following any small perturbation, such as continual random thermal “noise” fluctuations. In contrast, an unstable plasma would likely depart from its equilibrium state and rapidly (perhaps in less than one-thousandth of a second) escape the confining magnetic field following any small perturbation.

A plasma in stable equilibrium can be maintained indefinitely if the leakage of energy from the plasma is balanced by energy input. If the plasma energy loss is too large, then ignition cannot be achieved. An unavoidable diffusion of energy across the magnetic field lines will occur from the collisions between the particles. The net effect is to transport energy from the hot core to the wall. In theory, this transport process, known as classical diffusion, is not strong in hot fusion plasmas and can be compensated by heat from the alpha particle fusion products. In experiments, however, energy is lost from the plasma at 10 to 100 times that expected from classical diffusion theory. Solution of the anomalous transport problem involves research into fundamental topics in plasma physics, such as plasma turbulence.

Many different types of magnetic configurations for plasma confinement have been devised and tested over the years. These may be grouped into two classes: closed, toroidal configurations and open, linear configurations. Toroidal devices are the most highly developed. In a simple straight magnetic field, the plasma would be free to stream out the ends. End loss can be eliminated by forming the plasma and field in the closed shape of a doughnut, or torus, or, in an approach called mirror confinement, by “plugging” the ends of such a device magnetically and electrostatically.

Toroidal confinement

The most extensively investigated toroidal confinement concept is the tokamak. The tokamak (an acronym derived from the Russian words for “toroidal magnetic confinement”) was introduced in the mid-1960s by Soviet plasma physicists. The magnetic lines of force are helixes that spiral around the torus. The helical magnetic field has two components: (1) a toroidal component, which points the long way around the torus, and (2) a poloidal component directed the short way around the machine. Both components are necessary for the plasma to be in stable equilibrium. If the poloidal field were zero, so that the field lines were simply circles wrapped about the torus, then the plasma would not be in equilibrium. The particles would not strictly follow the field lines but would drift to the walls. The addition of the poloidal field provides particle orbits that are contained within the device. If the toroidal field were zero, so that the magnetic field lines were directed only the short way around the torus, the plasma would be in equilibrium, but it would be unstable. The plasma column would develop growing distortions, or kinks, which would carry the plasma into the wall.

The toroidal field is produced by coils that surround the toroidal vacuum chamber containing the plasma. (The plasma must be situated within an evacuated chamber to prevent it from being cooled by interactions with air molecules.) In order to minimize power losses in the coils, designs involving superconducting coils have begun to replace copper coils. The plasma in a tokamak fusion reactor would have a major diameter in the range of 10 metres (33 feet) and a minor diameter of roughly 2 to 3 metres. The plasma current would likely be on the order of tens of millions of amperes, and the flex density of the toroidal magnetic field would measure several teslas. In order to help guide research and development, scientists frequently perform conceptual designs of fusion reactors. One such concept is shown in the figure. This device in theory would generate 1 gigawatt (1 billion watts) of electric power—sufficient to meet the electricity needs of a large city.

The poloidal field is generated by a toroidal electric current that is forced to flow within the conducting plasma. Faraday’s law of induction can be used to initiate and build up the current. A solenoid located in the hole of the torus can be used to generate magnetic flux that increases over time. The time-varying flux induces a toroidal electric field that drives the plasma current. This technique efficiently drives a pulsed plasma current. However, it cannot be used for a steady-state current, which would require a magnetic flux increasing indefinitely over time. Unfortunately, a pulsed reactor would suffer from many engineering problems, such as materials fatigue, and thus other methods have been developed to drive a steady-state current to produce the poloidal magnetic field.

A technique known as radio-frequency (RF) current drive employs electromagnetic radiation to generate a steady-state current. Electromagnetic waves are injected into the plasma so that they propagate within the plasma in one direction around the torus. The speed of the waves is chosen to equal roughly the average speed of the electrons in the plasma. The wave electric field (which in a plasma has a component along its direction of travel) can then continuously accelerate the electrons as the wave and particles move together around the torus. The electrons develop a net motion, or current, in one direction.

Another established current-drive technique is neutral-beam current drive. A beam of high-energy neutral atoms is injected into the plasma along the toroidal direction. The neutral beam will freely enter the plasma since it is unaffected by the magnetic field. The neutral atoms become ionized by collisions with the electrons. The beam then consists of energetic positively charged nuclei that are confined within the plasma by the magnetic field. The high-speed ions travel toroidally along the magnetic field and collide with the electrons, pushing them in one direction and thereby producing a current.

Both RF and neutral-beam current-drive techniques have a low efficiency (i.e., they require a large amount of power to drive the plasma current). Fortunately, a remarkable effect occurs in tokamak plasmas that reduces the need for external current drive. If the plasma pressure is greater in the core than at the edge, this pressure differential spontaneously drives a toroidal current in the plasma. This current is called the bootstrap current. It can be considered a type of thermoelectric effect, but its origin is in the complex particle dynamics that arise in a toroidal plasma. It has been observed in experiments and is now included routinely in advanced experiments and in tokamak reactor designs.

Other toroidal confinement concepts that offer potential advantages over the tokamak are being developed. Three such alternatives are the stellarator, reversed-field pinch (RFP), and compact torus concepts. The stellarator and RFP are much like the tokamak. In the stellarator the magnetic field is produced by external coils only. Thus, the plasma current is essentially zero, and the problems inherent in sustaining a large plasma current are absent. The RFP differs from the tokamak in that it operates with a weak toroidal magnetic field. This results in a compact, high-power-density reactor with copper (instead of superconducting) coils. Compact tori are toroidal plasmas with no hole in the centre of the torus. Reactors based on compact tori are small and avoid the engineering complications of coils linking the plasma torus.