High fusion gain on JET burning DT plasma with flowing liquid lithium

Speaker: 
Leonid Zakharov
Institution: 
LiWFusion, Princeton, NJ
Date: 
Tuesday, September 11, 2018
Time: 
11:00 am
Location: 
FRH 4179
Abstract:
Recycling is the most important effect in energy confinement in tokamak plasma. Flowing liquid lithium coating can reduce recycling from close to 100% in conventional tokamaks to 50-75 % in CDX-U tokamak with lithium tray, and transitionally to almost 0 in LTX tokamak with lithium coated shell conformal to the plasma boundary. In plasma limited by a divertor separatrix, it is possible to expect recycling less than 50%. In combination with neutral beam injection (NBI) fueling, I called this low recycling “the best possible confinement regime” when thermal conduction in plasma core ceases to play a role. Instead, particle diffusion determines confinement, which in turn is determined by the best confined component (i.e., ions). This talk outlines a special technology for low recycling regime, i.e., continuously flowing liquid lithium divertor, called 24/7-FLiLi, capable to prevent plasma cooling by recycling. Designed by the author of this presentation, the first versions of 24/7-FLiLi were installed on HT-7 and EAST tokamaks in ASIPP (Hefei, China) and tested in 2012 and 2014. 24/7-FLiLi is suggested for DT experiment on JET tokamak in UK with high performance burning plasma. In comparison with objectives of the current program and JET results of 1997, the projected performance is astonishing: fusion power PDT = 23 − 26 MW, fusion efficiency QDT = 5.7 − 6.4, tritium burn up 7.8-8.7 % with modest NBI power PNBI = 4 MW, and energy ENBI =120 keV. In general, this new plasma regime could resolves the outstanding burning plasma issues unsolvable by the currently dominant approach.
Host: 
Zhihong Lin