COVER STORY | FUSION UPDATE
Russia upgrades its tokamaks Russia works on fusion at the Kurchatov Institute and the Troitsk Institute of Innovative and Thermonuclear Research (Triniti). In May, Russia launched the Tokamak T-15MD (toroidal chamber with magnetic coils) at the Kurchatov Institute – a modified version of the T-15 reactor, which has been operating since the late 1980s. The T-15MD will undertake research for ITER. In October, Triniti and Krasnaya Zvezda (Rosatom’s
Above: T-15MD was launched in 2021, becoming the first new fusion installation at Russia’s Kurchatov Institute in 20 years Photo credit: Iter Organization
V In a £350,000 ‘Fusion Innovation Challenge’ UKAEA
awarded contracts to Atkins, Frazer-Nash Consultancy, IDOM, Jacobs and M5Tec for innovation including machinery that can operate in strong magnetic fields, construction of bioshields and designs for transferring heat in pipes.
US funding for fusion US government fusion research is focused on the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL’s) National Ignition Facility (NIF) and the DIII-D National Fusion Facility at Columbia University, operated by General Atomics (GA) as a national user facility for the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science. In early 2021, both the DOE Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released reports calling for aggressive development of fusion. The latter called for bold action and grid connection in 2035–2040. Both wanted a low-cost pilot plant to pave the way for commercial reactors. In March, scientists at DIII-D released a new design for
a compact fusion reactor based on its Advanced Tokamak. The Compact Advanced Tokamak (CAT) combines theory developed at GA with computing by Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists. CAT drives most of its own current during operation, reducing the need for expensive current- drive systems that reduce plant efficiency. In June, DOE announced funding of $6.4 million for
seven US research projects at the world’s two largest superconducting stellarator facilities — Wendelstein 7-X (Germany) and the Large Helical Device (Japan). Stellarators can provide continuous operation without plasma disruptions and with low recirculating power requirements. In August, NIF reported yield of more than 1.3MJ from
a laser-based inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research device — almost at the threshold of fusion ignition. In September DOE announced $7.6 million to support
nine frontier plasma science projects at five DOE National Laboratories.
space propulsion systems enterprise) carried out external refuelling of Triniti’s T-11M tokamak with liquid lithium in a continuous operating cycle and without violating the vacuum conditions in its working chamber. Triniti has been developing technologies for the first wall and divertor for fusion reactors, including liquid metal. The goal is to weaken the destructive effect of hot plasma on the in-chamber elements. Triniti director Dmitry Markov said this opens up opportunities for lithium protection of the first wall of the tokamak in a quasi-stationary mode and will first be applied on T-15MD. In July, the AA Bochvar Institute of Inorganic Materials announced development of a basic version of the technological tritium cycle for modernisation of the strong field tokamak (TSP) a large research and experimental base designed to work with pre-reactor-scale thermonuclear installations. VNIINM developed the basic tritium cycle with Triniti specialists. Deuterium-deuterium fuel mixtures in fusion produce tritium, which has to be removed from the used plasma. VNIINM aims to develop a preliminary design for the tritium complex and complete design documentation by 2024. Triniti is planning to build a new thermonuclear reactor
by 2030 under RTTN and to upgrade the TSP tokamak, which began operation in 1987 but was suspended following the collapse of the USSR. One option for the new tokamak is a Russian-Italian project, ‘Ignitor’, — a compact tokamak with an ultra-strong magnetic field whose installation is quite advanced. The second is a national tokamak using reactor technologies, which could begin in 2022.
Records broken in South Korea and China In 2021, new records were set in Asia. In May China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting
Tokamak (EAST) maintained a plasma temperature at 120 million °C for 101 seconds and at 160 million °C for 20 seconds. EAST is one of three domestic tokamaks in China. The HL-2M tokamak fusion reactor at CNNC’s Southwestern Institute of Physics in Sichuan was commissioned in December 2020 as an upgrade of the HL-2A. The third, J-TEXT, is at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology. In November, Korea’s National Fusion Research Institute announced that plasma operation at 100 million °C, continued for 30 seconds during the latest tests at the Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) — a new world record. This was the result of further optimised magnetic field conditions and heating systems. The team aims to sustain the plasma for 300 seconds in 2026 through further upgrades. ■
20 | March 2022 |
www.neimagazine.com
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