High power high energy pulse production and application : the proceedings of an Australian-US Seminar on Energy Storage, Compression and Switching, SESCAS '77, 15-21 November, 1977

Interest has grown rapidly in new methods of storing megajoules of energy and delivering it to loads in times ranging from about one second to less than a millisecond. It is clear that storage by capacitors is reaching the limit of applicability, and new methods are required for powering the next generation of tokamaks, theta pinches, large lasers and pulsed electron and ion beam machines. During the past 25 years, a small but vital group in the Department of Engineering Physics at the Australian National University, has designed and built a homopolar generator to store 500 MJ and capable of discharging in about Is to produce current in excess of IMA at 400V for Is. It has been in operation for 13 years but is still the largest facility of its kind in the world. This record of papers presented at the Seminar held at the ANU provides more details of the Canberra homopolar generator than any other publication. Other papers provide information on fast discharge homopolar machines developed at the University of Texas at Austin, The Westinghouse Corporation, and at the Argonne National Laboratory. Details are also given of the latest operation and methods of switching large dc currents. Other papers deal with the application of these techniques to the powering of large fusion machines