Session RP1 - Poster Session VIII.
POSTER session, Thursday afternoon, October 30
Fran Hill Southeast Exhibit Hall, ACC
In principle, it is possible to scale up the parameters of Ignitor, the only experiment proposed and designed to reach ignition, but within a narrow range preserving the ability to maintain this goal with reasonable margins against the onset of macroscopic instabilities, given the high plasma pressures required. A strong ohmic heating is to be maintained so that ignition can be reached even in the case of a failure of the ICRH system. The Columbus experiment^2 is proposed as a parallel US project to the Ignitor program carried out in Italy and is geometrically self similar to this, the dimensions being increased by 25/22 (R_o=1.50 m) and the volume by about 50%. The most important parameter design guideline is the value of the mean poloidal field (\sim3.4T ). The plasma current I_p\sim12.2MA is close to that of the ITER-Feat concept for the same value of the safety factor q_95(\Psi)\sim3.6. As in the case of Ignitor and ITER-Feat, the plasma current redistribution time and the duration time of the plasma burning state are comparable. Columbus incorporates all the technological solutions developed for Ignitor.
^2B. Coppi and M.F. Salvetti, MIT (RLE) Report PTP 02/06 (December 2002, Cambridge, MA)