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Start Over Domain Natural Sciences Year Published 2022

2. Data for "The value of fusion energy to a decarbonized United States electric grid"

Author(s):
Schwartz, Jacob A.; Ricks, Wilson; Kolemen, Egemen; Jenkins, Jesse D.
Abstract:
Fusion could be a part of future decarbonized electricity systems, but it will need to compete with other technologies. In particular, pulsed tokamaks plants have a unique operational mode, and evaluating which characteristics make them economically competitive can help select between design pathways. Using a capacity expansion and operations model, we determined cost thresholds for pulsed tokamaks to reach a range of penetration levels in a future decarbonized US Eastern Interconnection. The required capital cost to reach a fusion capacity of 100 GW varied from $3000 to $7200/kW, and the equilibrium penetration increases rapidly with decreasing cost. The value per unit power capacity depends on the variable operational cost and on cost of its competition, particularly fission, much more than on the pulse cycle parameters. These findings can therefore provide initial cost targets for fusion more generally in the United States.
Type:
Dataset
Issue Date:
2022

3. Design of an arrangement of cubic magnets for a quasi-axisymmetric stellarator experiment

Author(s):
Hammond, Kenneth; Zhu, Caoxiang; Korrigan, Keith; Gates, David; Lown, Robert; Mercurio, Robert; Qian, Tony; Zarnstorff, Michael
Abstract:
The usage of permanent magnets to shape the confining field of a stellarator has the potential to reduce or eliminate the need for non-planar coils. As a proof-of-concept for this idea, we have developed a procedure for designing an array of cubic permanent magnets that works in tandem with a set of toroidal-field coils to confine a stellarator plasma. All of the magnets in the design are constrained to have identical geometry and one of three polarization types in order to simplify fabrication while still producing sufficient field accuracy. We present some of the key steps leading to the design, including the geometric arrangement of the magnets around the device, the procedure for optimizing the polarizations according to three allowable magnet types, and the choice of magnet types to be used. We apply these methods to design an array of rare-Earth permanent magnets that can be paired with a set of planar toroidal-field coils to confine a quasi-axisymmetric plasma with a toroidal magnetic field strength of about 0.5 T on axis.
Type:
Dataset
Issue Date:
2022

4. Electron Temperature Gradient Driven Transport Model for Tokamak Plasmas

Author(s):
Rafiq, Tariq; Wilson, Christopher; Luo, Lixiang; Weiland, Jan; Schuster, Eugenio; Pankin, Alexei; Guttenfelder, Walter; Kaye, Stan
Abstract:
A new model for electron temperature gradient (ETG) modes is developed as a component of the Multi-Mode anomalous transport module [T. Rafiq \textit{et al.,} Phys Plasmas \textbf{20}, 032506 (2013)] to predict a time dependent electron temperature profile in conventional and low aspect ratio tokamaks. This model is based on two-fluid equations that govern the dynamics of low-frequency short- and long-wavelength electromagnetic toroidal ETG driven drift modes. A low collisionality NSTX discharge is used to scan the plasma parameter dependence on the ETG real frequency, growth rate, and electron thermal diffusivity. Electron thermal transport is discovered in the deep core region where modes are more electromagnetic in nature. Several previously reported gyrokinetic trends are reproduced, including the dependencies of density gradients, magnetic shear, $\beta$ and gradient of $\beta$ $(\betap)$, collisionality, safety factor, and toroidicity, where $\beta$ is the ratio of plasma pressure to the magnetic pressure. The electron heat diffusivity associated with the ETG mode is discovered to be on a scale consistent with the experimental diffusivity determined by power balance analysis.
Type:
Dataset
Issue Date:
30 August 2022

6. Energetic particle optimization of quasi-axisymmetric stellarator equilibria

Author(s):
LeViness, Alexandra; Schmitt, John; Lazerson, Samuel; Bader, Aaron; Faber, Benjamin; Hammond, Kenneth; Gates, David
Abstract:
An important goal of stellarator optimization is to achieve good confinement of energetic particles such as, in the case of a reactor, alphas created by Deuterium-Tritium (D-T) fusion. In this work, a fixed-boundary stellarator equilibrium was re-optimized for energetic particle confinement via a two-step process: first, by minimizing deviations from quasi-axisymmetry (QA) on a single flux surface near the mid-radius, and secondly by maintaining this improved quasi-axisymmetry while minimizing the analytical quantity ΓC , which represents the angle between magnetic flux surfaces and contours of J||, the second adiabatic invariant. This was performed multiple times, resulting in a group of equilibria with significantly reduced energetic particle losses, as evaluated by Monte Carlo simulations of alpha particles in scaled-up versions of the equilibria. This is the first time that energetic particle losses in a QA stellarator have successfully been reduced by optimizing ΓC . The relationship between energetic particle losses and metrics such as QA error (Eqa) and ΓC in this set of equilibria were examined via statistical methods and a nearly linear relationship between volume-averaged ΓC and prompt particle losses was found.
Type:
Dataset
Issue Date:
2022

8. Fusion Pilot Plant performance and the role of a Sustained High Power Density tokamak

Author(s):
Menard, Jonathan; Grierson, Brian; Brown, Tom; Rana, Chirag; Zhai, Yuhu; Poli, Francesca; Maingi, Rajesh; Guttenfelder, Walter; Snyder, Philip
Abstract:
Recent U.S. fusion development strategy reports all recommend that the U.S. should pursue innovative science and technology to enable construction of a Fusion Pilot Plant (FPP) that produces net electricity from fusion at low capital cost. Compact tokamaks have been proposed as a means of potentially reducing the capital cost of a fusion pilot plant. However, compact steady-state tokamak FPPs face the challenge of integrating a high fraction of self-driven current with high core confinement, plasma pressure, and high divertor parallel heat flux. This integration is sufficiently challenging that a dedicated sustained-high-power-density (SHPD) tokamak facility is proposed by the U.S. community as the optimal way to close this integration gap. Performance projections for the steady-state tokamak FPP regime are presented and a preliminary SHPD device with substantial flexibility in lower aspect ratio (A=2-2.5), shaping, and divertor configuration to narrow gaps to a FPP is described.
Type:
Dataset
Issue Date:
January 2022

9. Global gyrokinetic study of shaping effects on electromagnetic modes at NSTX aspect ratio with ad hoc parallel magnetic perturbation effects

Author(s):
Sharma, A. Y.; Cole, M. D. J.; Görler, T.; Chen, Y.; Hatch, D. R.; Guttenfelder, W.; Hager, R.; Sturdevant, B. J.; Ku, S.; Chang, C. S.
Abstract:
Plasma shaping may have a stronger effect on global turbulence in tight-aspect-ratio tokamaks than in conventional-aspect-ratio tokamaks due to the higher toroidicity and more acute poloidal asymmetry in the magnetic field. In addition, previous local gyrokinetic studies have shown that it is necessary to include parallel magnetic field perturbations in order to accurately compute growth rates of electromagnetic modes in tight-aspect-ratio tokamaks. In this work, the effects of elongation and triangularity on global, ion-scale, linear electromagnetic modes are studied at NSTX aspect ratio and high plasma beta using the global gyrokinetic particle-in-cell code XGC. The effects of compressional magnetic perturbations are approximated via a well-known modification to the particle drifts that was developed for flux-tube simulations [N. Joiner et al., Phys. Plasmas 17, 072104 (2010)], without proof of its validity in a global simulation. Magnetic equilibria are re-constructed for each distinct plasma profile that is used. Coulomb collision effects are not considered. Within the limitations imposed by the present study, it is found that linear growth rates of electromagnetic modes (collisionless microtearing modes and kinetic ballooning modes) are significantly reduced by NSTX-like shaping. For example, growth rates of kinetic ballooning modes at high beta are reduced to the level of that of collisionless trapped electron modes.
Type:
Dataset
Issue Date:
2022

10. Gyrokinetic simulations of momentum flux parasitic to free-energy transfer

Author(s):
Stoltzfus-Dueck, T; Hornsby, W A; Grosshauser, S R
Abstract:
Ion Landau damping interacts with a portion of the E×B drift to cause a non-diffusive outward flux of co-current toroidal angular momentum. Quantitative evaluation of this momentum flux requires nonlinear simulations to determine fL, the fraction of fluctuation free energy that passes through ion Landau damping, in fully developed turbulence. Nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations with the GKW code confirm the presence of the systematic symmetry-breaking momentum flux. For simulations with adiabatic electrons, fL scales inversely with the ion temperature gradient, because only the ion curvature drift can transfer free energy to the electrostatic potential. Although kinetic electrons should in principle relax this restriction, the ion Landau damping measured in collisionless kinetic-electron simulations remained at low levels comparable with ion-curvature-drift transfer, except when magnetic shear was strong. A set of simulations scanning the electron pitch-angle scattering rate showed only a weak variation of fL with the electron collisionality. However, collisional-electron simulations with electron temperature greater than ion temperature unambiguously showed electron-curvature-drift transfer supporting ion Landau damping, leading to a corresponding enhancement of the symmetry-breaking momentum flux.
Type:
Dataset
Issue Date:
2022

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