Conceptual design study of spheromak reactors

Preliminary design studies are carried out for a spheromak fusion reactor. Simplified circuit theory is applied to obtain characteristic relations among various parameters of the spheromak configuration for an aspect ratio A greater than or equal to 1.6. These relations are used to calculate the parameters for the conceptual designs of three types of fusion reactor: (1) DT two-component, (2) DT ignited, and, (3) catalyzed DD ignited reactors. With a total wall loading of approx. 4 MWm/sup -2/, it is found that edge magnetic fields of only approx. 4T (DT) and approx. 9T (cat. DD) are required for ignited reactors of one-meter plasma (minor) radius with output powers in the gigawatt range. Assessment of various methods of generating reactor-grade spheromak plasmas is discussed briefly