High-Q Thermally Stable Operation of a Tokamak Reactor

Thermally stable subignited operation of a tokamak reactor, sustained in operation by a feedback-controlled supplementary heating source, is discussed. One-dimensional (radial) thermal stability analyses of model transport equations, together with numerical results from a one-dimensional (1-D) transport code, are used in studying the heating of deuterium-tritium (D-T) plasmas in the thermonuclear regime. The establishment of stability depends on a number of radially nonuniform nonlinear processes whose effect is analyzed. Nonuniform heat deposition resulting from plasma core supplementary heating is found to be a thermally more stable process than bulk heating. In the presence of impurity line radiation, however, core-heated temperature profiles may collapse, contracting inward from the limiter, the result of a radiation-induced instability. The effect of nonuniform transport coefficients is also discussed. Conditions are established for the realization of a subignited high-Q (Q ¿ 50) toroidal reactor plasma with appreciable output power (¿2000 MW thermal).