In November 2006, ministers representing the world’s major fusion research communities signed the agreement formally establishing the international project ITER. Sited at Cadarache in France, the project involves China, the European Union (including Switzerland), India, Japan, the Russian Federation, South Korea and the United States. ITER is a critical step in the development of fusion energy: its role is to confirm the feasibility of exploiting magnetic confinement fusion for the production of energy for peaceful purposes by providing an integrated demonstration of the physics and technology required for a fusion power plant. The ITER tokamak is designed to study the “burning plasma” regime in deuterium-tritium (D-T) plasmas by achieving a fusion amplification factor, Q (the ratio of fusion output power to plasma heating input power), of 10 for several hundreds of seconds with a nominal fusion power output of 500MW. It is also intended to allow the study of steady-state plasma operation at Q≥5 by means of non-inductive current drive, preparing the way for fusion power plants to operate continuously.
ITER relies on the “tokamak” magnetic confinement concept. In the first of 2 lectures, the essential elements of fusion power production in terrestrial plasmas will be summarized, key physics concepts of the magnetic confinement approach to the production of fusion plasmas introduced and the principal magnetic confinement configurations illustrated. The major characteristics of the tokamak will be discussed and the basis for the estimation of fusion power production in magnetically confined plasmas outlined. A brief comparison with the main physics and technology concepts relating to inertial confinement fusion will also be presented. The lecture will conclude with an introduction to the major elements of the ITER design.
The second lecture will explore some of the key physics phenomena which govern the behaviour of magnetic fusion plasmas and which have been the subject of intense research during the past 50 years: plasma confinement, magnetohydrodynamic stability and plasma-wall interactions encompass the major areas of plasma physics which must be understood to assemble an overall description of fusion plasma behaviour. In addition, as fusion plasmas approach the “burning plasma” regime, where internal heating due to fusion products dominates other forms of heating, the physics of the interaction between the α-particles produced by D-T fusion reactions and the thermal “background” plasma becomes significant. This lecture will also introduce the basic physics of fusion plasma production, plasma heating and current drive, and plasma measurements (“diagnostics”).
