Demountable Toroidal Field Magnets for Use in a Compact Modular Fusion Reactor

A concept of demountable toroidal field magnets for a compact fusion reactor is discussed. The magnets generate a magnetic field of 9.2 T on axis, in a 3.3 m major radius tokamak. Subcooled YBCO conductors have a critical current density adequate to provide this large magnetic field, while operating at 20 K reduces thermodynamic cooling cost of the resistive electrical joints. Demountable magnets allow for vertical replacement and maintenance of internal components, potentially reducing cost and time of maintenance when compared to traditional sector maintenance. Preliminary measurements of contact resistance of a demountable YBCO electrical joint between are presented

Smaller & Sooner: Exploiting High Magnetic Fields from New Superconductors for a More Attractive Fusion Energy Development Path

The current fusion energy development path, based on large volume moderate magnetic B field devices is proving to be slow and expensive. A modest development effort in exploiting new superconductor magnet technology development, and accompanying plasma physics research at high-B, could open up a viable and attractive path for fusion energy development. This path would feature smaller volume, fusion capable devices that could be built more quickly than low-to-moderate field designs based on conventional superconductors. Fusion’s worldwide development could be accelerated by using several small, flexible devices rather than relying solely on a single, very large device. These would be used to obtain the acknowledged science and technology knowledge necessary for fusion energy beyond achievement of high gain. Such a scenario would also permit the testing of multiple confinement configurations while distributing technical and scientific risk among smaller devices. Higher field and small size also allows operation away from well-known operational limits for plasma pressure, density and current. The advantages of this path have been long recognized—earlier US plans for burning plasma experiments (compact ignition tokamak, burning plasma experiment, fusion ignition research experiment) featured compact high-field designs, but these were necessarily pulsed due to the use of copper coils. Underpinning this new approach is the recent industrial maturity of high-temperature, high-field superconductor tapes that would offer a truly “game changing” opportunity for magnetic fusion when developed into large-scale coils. The superconductor tape form and higher operating temperatures also open up the possibility of demountable superconducting magnets in a fusion system, providing a modularity that vastly improves simplicity in the construction, maintenance, and upgrade of the coils and the internal nuclear engineering components required for fusion’s development. Our conclusion is that while tradeoffs exist in design choices, for example coil, cost and stress limits versus size, the potential physics and technology advantages of high-field superconductors are attractive and they should be vigorously pursued for magnetic fusion’s development

Design of a superconducting magnetic shield closed on both ends for a high-sensitivity particle detector

peer reviewedThis work deals with the numerical design of a high-efficiency superconducting magnetic shield required for a high-sensitivity particle detector. This research was carried out in the context of the ‘ABRACADABRA’ project aiming at detecting hypothetical elementary particles called axions. Axions are promising candidates to explain the particle nature of the dark matter. The detector relies on a SQUID for measuring the ultra-small oscillating magnetic field resulting from the interaction between the axions and a toroidal DC field. A magnetic shield is mandatory to reduce the ambient magnetic field noise. Given the operating temperature (~ 1.2 K), the shield is made of type-I superconductor. In this work we use numerical modelling to determine the best topology for the shield and its ability to screen both axial and transverse fields. Amongst the geometries investigated (tubes or ‘swiss-rolls’ closed on both ends) the best results are obtained with two semi-closed tubes inserted in one another. This geometry is close to the shield of the final prototype, made of two closed Cu tubes, spin-coated with Sn (Tc = 3.72 K) and welded shut

A Ioffe Trap Magnet for the Project 8 Atom Trapping Demonstrator

The goal of the Project 8 experiment (B. Monreal and J. Formaggio, 2009) is to measure the absolute neutrino mass using tritium, which involves precisely measuring the energies of the beta-decay electrons in the high-energy tail of the spectrum (A. A. Esfahani et al., 2017). The experimental installation of Project 8 Atom Trapping Demonstrator requires a magnet with rather unusual field properties. The magnet has to contain within the cold mass a large volume enclosed by a continuous, uninterrupted boundary higher than 2 T, whereas the field in a substantial volume inside this boundary has to be of the order of 10 -4 T or less. A 1-T solenoid field provides the background field necessary for the detection of the beta-decay electrons (A. A. Esfahani et al., 2019). A proposed toroidal magnet system [a Ioffe-Pritchard trap (T. Bergeman et al., 1987)] comprised of specially shaped multiple racetrack windings with opposing polarities satisfies these unusual requirements. The magnet is made of NbTi wire and expected to be conduction cooled. Manufacturability issues are addressed as well as the effect of tolerances on the field quality. The design includes additional topological features providing a low-field duct for interfacing with the peripheral coils of the velocity and state selector

Designing a tokamak fusion reactor—How does plasma physics fit in?

This paper attempts to bridge the gap between tokamak reactor design and plasma physics. The analysis demonstrates that the overall design of a tokamak fusion reactor is determined almost entirely by the constraints imposed by nuclear physics and fusion engineering. Virtually, no plasma physics is required to determine the main design parameters of a reactor: a, R[subscript 0], B[subscript 0], T[subscript i], T[subscript e], p, n, τ[subscript E], I. The one exception is the value of the toroidal current I, which depends upon a combination of engineering and plasma physics. This exception, however, ultimately has a major impact on the feasibility of an attractive tokamak reactor. The analysis shows that the engineering/nuclear physics design makes demands on the plasma physics that must be satisfied in order to generate power. These demands are substituted into the well-known operational constraints arising in tokamak physics: the Troyon limit, Greenwald limit, kink stability limit, and bootstrap fraction limit. Unfortunately, a tokamak reactor designed on the basis of standard engineering and nuclear physics constraints does not scale to a reactor. Too much current is required to achieve the necessary confinement time for ignition. The combination of achievable bootstrap current plus current drive is not sufficient to generate the current demanded by the engineering design. Several possible solutions are discussed in detail involving advances in plasma physics or engineering. The main contribution of the present work is to demonstrate that the basic reactor design and its plasma physics consequences can be determined simply and analytically. The analysis thus provides a crisp, compact, logical framework that will hopefully lead to improved physical intuition for connecting plasma physic to tokamak reactor design.United States. Department of Energy (Grant DE-FG02-91ER54109)United States. Department of Energy (Grant DE-FC02-93ER54186

Present Status and Recent Developments of the Twisted Stacked-Tape Cable Conductor

The high magnetic field performance of a 40-tape twisted stacked-tape cable (TSTC) conductor made of 4-mm-width 0.1-mm-thick REBCO tapes was successfully tested. The critical current was 6.0 kA, with the n-value of 35, at 4.2 K with a background field of 17 T. No cyclic load effect was observed between 10 and 17 T with the maximum Lorentz load of 102 kN/m. Various issues, such as sample length, nonuniformity of termination resistances, and soldered joint of a coated tape cable, with regard to a TSTC conductor are discussed. Large-scale conductor designs of various scalable TSTC conductors are discussed, taking into account current densities and stabilizers

Compact, Low-Cost, Light-Weight, Superconducting, Ironless Cyclotrons for Hadron Radiotherapy

Superconducting cyclotrons are increasingly employed for proton beam radiotherapy treatment (PBRT). The use of superconductivity in a cyclotron design can reduce its mass by an order of magnitude and size by a factor of 3-4 over conventional resistive magnet technology, yielding significant reduction in overall cost of the device, the accelerator vault, and its infrastructure, as well as reduced operating costs. At MIT, previous work was focused on developing a very high field (9 T at the pole face) superconducting synchrocyclotron that resulted in a highly compact device that is about an order of magnitude lighter, and much smaller in diameter than a conventional, resistive cyclotron. The results of the study reported here were focused on a conceptual design for a compact superconducting synchrocyclotron to demonstrate the possibility to further reduce its weight by almost another order of magnitude by eliminating all iron from the device. In the absence of magnetic iron poles, the magnetic field profile in the beam gap is achieved through a set of main superconducting split pair coils energized in series with a set of distributed field-shaping superconducting coils. External magnetic field shielding is achieved through a set of outer, superconducting ring coils, also connected in series with the other coils, to cancel the stray magnetic field. These shielding coils replace the heavy iron yoke which is the conventional method to return the magnetic flux. It is noted that the 10 Gauss surface is located at a radius of about 3.5 m comparable in both ironless and conventional devices, even in the absence of iron in the ironless device. An important result from eliminating all magnetic iron in the flux circuit is the resulting linear relationship between the operating current and the magnetic field intensity. In the case with iron, the saturation of the magnetic field forces operation at one value of magnetic field. This feature design then enables continuous beam energy variation without the use of an energy degrader, thus eliminating secondary radiation during the in-depth beam scanning, increasing the ion current delivered to the patient and improving the beam quality. The beam energy is determined by the magnetic field strength at the extraction radius, and changing the field enables selection of the final beam energy. The magnetic field can be adjusted while maintaining the needed radial field profile

Magnetic Testing of a Superferric Dipole That Uses Metal-Oxide Insulated CICC

A small dipole magnet designed for use in high-radiation environments that uses metal-oxide cable-in-conduit-conductor has been constructed and tested for magnetic properties. The conductor consisted of 42 strands of 0.5 mm diameter wires, in a conduit with outer dimension of 10 mm times 10 mm. The magnet carried about 8 kA. This gives an engineering current density of 80 A/mm[superscript 2]. The current density in the cable bundle is approximately 1 kA/mm[superscript 2].GSIU.S. Department of EnergyNational Science Foundatio