Page 12 - Fundamentals of Magnetic Thermonuclear Reactor Design

xx Preface

No less important was the fact that the controlled fusion was an incentive
for the technical progress in general. The manufacturing of superconductors and
related electromagnetic systems, the juvenile technologies for super-vacuum
3
generation in multiple 1000 m vessels, the production of gigawatt power
sources, unique generator lamps and high-speed switchgear for tens of kiloam-
peres, are just some of the engineering innovations designed to serve the needs
of the incipient ‘stellar’ power engineering and extending mankind’s industrial
and technological resources.
Plasma machines and the ITER reactor are not only scientific cognition tools
and nuclear fusion basic hardware. They also represent a harmonised aggregate
of the highest achievements in different fields of technology. The success of
specific plasma experiments and even research programs is critically dependent
upon how reasonable the design solution, physical estimates and material-
related assumptions are within them. The manufacturing quality and techno-
logical algorithms’ correctness are also important. Any deviation from design
sizes, distortion of magnetic coil configuration or spatial orientation, frequency
drift or phase shift in the control systems or increase in impurities getting into
the plasma due to the incorrectly performed vacuum technologies may be fatal
for the plasma column. There are hundreds of relevant examples.
These considerations may be truistic from a pure physics perspective.
However, when it comes to building a large device, to say nothing about a
thermonuclear reactor, the research focus is moving from plasma physics to
engineering. It is the engineering challenge that takes the creative effort of thou-
sands of specialists and most of material and financial investment.
Meanwhile, the coverage of nuclear fusion issues in literature is some-
what imbalanced; whereas monographs, collected articles and teach-
ing materials on plasma physics are issued systematically, publications
on the engineering and design problems of CTF are very rare. This book
is intended to correct this imbalance. It attempts to systematise and gen-
eralise the many years of experience of D.V. Efremov Scientific Research
Institute of Electrophysical Apparatus, gained in the creative cooperation
with the scientists of the Kurchatov Institute, A.F. Ioffe Physical-Technical
Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), Troitsk Institute of
Innovative and Thermonuclear Research, A.A. Bochvar High-Technology
Research Institute of Inorganic Materials, Nuclear Physics Institute of the
RAS Siberian Branch, A.M. Prokhorov General Physics Institute of the RAS,
N.A. Dollezhal Research and Development Institute of Power Engineering,
Kharkov Physical-Technical Institute, National Research Nuclear University
MEPhI, St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University and St. Petersburg State
University, as well as specialists from different domestic design groups and
industrial enterprises and their colleagues from abroad. The hallmarks of this
experience were the first Soviet/Russian thermonuclear machines, Alpha and
Ogra, built in 1958, followed by a line of tokamaks and stellarators of larger