Study of α-particle confinement in an LHD-type heliotron reactor

• Published in: Nuclear fusion Vol. 53; no. 9; pp. 93030 - 8
• Main Authors: Masaoka, Y., Murakami, S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IOP Publishing and International Atomic Energy Agency 01.09.2013
• Subjects: Confinement; Density; Energy (nuclear); High density; Nuclear engineering; Nuclear power generation; Nuclear reactor components; Nuclear reactors
• ISSN: 0029-5515; 1741-4326
• DOI: 10.1088/0029-5515/53/9/093030

Confinement of α particles is investigated in heliotron-type reactors extending the current Large Helical Device (LHD) magnetic configurations. The GNET (Global NEoclassical Transport) code is used to study α-particle confinement including energy slow-down and scattering of energy and pitch angle. It is found that the energy loss rate is reduced from 29% to 5% due to the improvement of the trapped particle orbit in the inward-shifted magnetic configurations. The density dependences of the α-particle confinement is also investigated to make the possibility of a high-density heliotron-type reactor clear. It is found that the energy loss rate depends strongly on the plasma density and reaches almost 0% at a high density near 5 × 1020 m−3 in the inward-shifted configurations.