Abstract
The tokamak stampede in the US is discussed, which resulting in an almost total switch to tokamaks all over the country and the shutting down of most other type of devices. The programmes of the various laboratories (Princeton, Oak Ridge, MIT, General Atomic) are described, as well as the Soviet’s programme during this period.
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Notes
- 1.
The Princeton group believed the results of their calculations of the magnetic system of Model C, without backing up their calculations with experiment. The various components of the Model-C magnetic system had to be tuned to each other with very high accuracy. The PPPL people ignored this step, although it was absolutely necessary for a new machine, and after poor results on plasma confinement they decided to convert their stellarator into a tokamak. But before the conversion took place, they actually did make some measurements and found out that the magnetic surfaces were not closed, which caused particles to leak out. This could have been remedied, but the decision had been made, and there was no way back (V. S. Voitsenya, Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology, private communication, March 2019).
- 2.
In the US there was at the time also strong interest in so-called bundle divertors in which a small bundle of the stronger toroidal field lines is diverted (Stacey 2010, p. 68).
- 3.
- 4.
Contrary to the Doublet series of General Atomic in which the plasma had a kidney-shaped cross section with an indentation on the outside (see below).
- 5.
Oak Ridge had ample expertise with the technology of particle beams although at very low beam intensities, which would have to be increased by a factor of thousand to heat a plasma to 100 million degrees. Such a high temperature was not yet aimed for though (Bromberg 1982, p. 161).
- 6.
Weinberg was fired by the Nixon administration because of his continued advocacy for nuclear safety and molten salt reactors, instead of the liquid metal fast-breeder reactor, favoured by the AEC and currently the only type of large-scale fast breeder reactor in operation. His firing effectively halted the development of the molten salt reactor. In 1974 Herman Postma (1933–2004) was appointed as Weinberg’s successor.
- 7.
For a rather lively exposé of the construction of this machine, see Roberts 1974.
- 8.
ORMAK also features in J. Bronowski’s renowned BBC TV series, “The Ascent of Man”.
- 9.
Named after Francis Bitter (1902–1967) a pioneer in the production of intense magnetic fields. He established a magnet laboratory at MIT in 1938.
- 10.
More information can be found on the laboratory’s website https://fusionenergy.lanl.gov/.
- 11.
This name was chosen because of the device’s high repetition rate, a unique design feature that facilitates study of some of the basic physics of tokamaks.
- 12.
So not spherical tokamaks for which there is a separate list.
- 13.
USAEC, AEC and Action Paper on Controlled Thermonuclear Research, June 1966, III-32, https://fire.pppl.gov/US_AEC_Fusion_Policy_1966.pdf, last accessed 26 July 2019.
- 14.
That there was at first nobody to take over Artsimovich’s role and the fusion program slowed down is confirmed to some extent by Sagdeev (Sagdeev 2018, p. 387). Velikhov is known among other things for the Velikhov-Chandrasekhar instability (a fluid instability that causes an accretion disk orbiting a massive object to become turbulent, first noticed by Velikhov in a non-astrophysical context and generalized later by Chandrasekhar) and the Velikhov instability (a magnetohydrodynamic instability occurring in magnetised cold plasmas).
- 15.
https://www.iter.org/newsline/-/2326, interview with Evgeny Velikhov dated 16 November 2015 (accessed 25 June 2019).
- 16.
ITER website https://www.iter.org/sci/tkmkresearch; about the second life of the T-15 see also https://www.iter.org/newsline/152/477.
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Reinders, L.J. (2021). The Tokamak Stampede, Part 1. In: The Fairy Tale of Nuclear Fusion. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64344-7_5
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