General Fusion update Michel Laberge
ARPAE- 2017
CONFIDENTIAL Spherical Shape
2 Magnetic Field During Compression
3 Shaft Current And Formation Current
4 X-Ray and Density
5 Next shot
• PCS15 will compress earlier when the plasma is hotter • Better temperature diagnostic, x-ray, ion Doppler, neutrons • Unfortunately the current profile is hollow at these earlier time • Plasma might go unstable • Shoot in September, if it rains (forest fire hazard too high right now!!)
6 Change to slower liner, less peak energy density
• Peter Turchi and others convinced us that we can’t exceed 100T at peak compression due to wall vaporization • Start with larger flux conserver radius (20 cm to1.5 m), lower density (1e17 cm-3 to 3e14 cm-3), hotter (100 eV to 400 eV) plasma • Slower compression time (100 µs to 4 ms) less compression ratio (10 to 7:1) • Rotation stabilization of RT instability (1000 rpm) • Lower peak field (700 T to 100 T) and density (1e20 cm-3 to 1e17 cm-3)
• Much more LINUS like 7 Fusion Technology Comparison
Magnetic Field (Tesla) Normal Super- Max Flux Plasma Energy conductor HTC Max DC Compression Driver Power 1 30 1.00E+3 3.00E+4 1.00E+6 1.00E+11 1.00E+15 NIF ITER GJ TW 1.00E+08 1.00E+12
GF MJ GW $ Cost of Driver Cost $ 1.00E+05 1.00E+09 $ Cost of Confinement Cost $
kJ MW 1.00E+02 1.00E+06 1.00E+13 1.00E+16 1.00E+19 1.00E+22 1.00E+25
Plasma Density (cm-3) 8 Initial plasma spherical tokamak
• We achieved much better confinement with spherical tokamak • Lack of toroidal field in edge of spheromak produce stochastic field in the edge, fast electrons escape, poor confinement • Did not try FRC but I suspect the lack of toroidal there to also cause poor confinement • Better bet to compress the pretty well known spherical tokamak • Need central shaft, engineering pain but easier than confinement pain • To compress spheromak or FRC need faster compression because of poor confinement 9 General Fusion’s Solution
v v v 1. Inject Plasma Fuel 2. Compress Plasma Fuel 3. Extract Energy
10 Next step
• Designing a ~1.5 m radius liquid lithium plasma formation and compression machine • ~1MA of plasma current spherical tokamak starting plasma (MAST/NSTX class) • Sub-breakeven but high performance (10 keV at 7e16 cm-3) • Still costing the machine but estimate ~100 M$ • 3-5 years project • Will try to raise this money towards the end of this year
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