A breakthrough in
fusion power design
The core of a fusion reactor is where the fusion plasma is confined and the fusion reaction occurs at more than 100,000,000 °C. Therefore, stable plasma confinement under these conditions is crucial for success.
Since the early start of fusion power research, several principal designs of magnetically confined fusion reactors have been developed and investigated:
designs with closed magnetic field lines like tokamaks and stellarators.
designs with open-field magnetic lines like mirror machines and cusps.
By the mid-1980s, both tokamaks and mirror designs made steady progress. However, in later years work has been focused on the more promising tokamak design. Nevertheless, the past decades of research have created significant breakthroughs in favor of open-field line confinement.
A tokamak reactor design.
The NOVATRON is an open-field line confinement solution that provides the desired stability features lacking in any previously known fusion plasma confinement design.
The Novatron device has a large amount of symmetry and thus simplicity. This is extremely important in terms of efficiency and economics.
Jan Scheffel, Professor Fusion Plasma Physics
KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Keeping plasma in place
The innovative NOVATRON™ design allows us to create a magnetic field where the plasma particle encounters an increasingly stronger magnetic field as it moves away from the centre of the reactor.
Back in the 1950s, the American physicist Ira Bernstein formally described the requirements for a magnetic field to create magnetohydrodynamically stable conditions for the fusion plasma. Although well defined, all previous fusion concepts, where these requirements are essential, have yet to fulfil them.
Controlling plasma with a magnetic field
A plasma consists of electrically charged particles; thus, it will interact with electromagnetic fields, which is the primary physical mechanism in magnetic confinement fusion. The plasma will be pushed away from regions with a stronger magnetic field towards regions with a weaker magnetic field. As long as the outer edges of the confinement region have a stronger magnetic field than the inner regions, the plasma will be stably confined. However, if the plasma gets disturbed and tries to move outwards towards the vessel walls, it will meet a stronger magnetic field, pushing it back into the confinement region. Picture a magnetic fluid inside a bowl with magnetic walls. The fluid will be stably kept inside the bowl, contained by the high walls in all directions.
Plasma instability
If there are parts of the confinement region where the magnetic field gets weaker as the plasma moves outwards, the plasma might be stable for a while if there are no disturbances. However, the plasma will be very lively and dynamic. Suppose a slight instability moves some plasma out of equilibrium and into a region where the magnetic field weakens. In that case, the instability will grow into that region, and the plasma will escape from confinement like a fluid flowing down a hill.
There are various ways of trying to solve the resulting stability problems. Some concepts try to shape their plasma in various ways to average out the effects by constantly moving the plasma between good and bad confinement regions. This can be done by driving a powerful current through the plasma, which isn't feasible for continuous running, or by shaping the external magnets in intricate ways.
Some concepts use active feedback control to try to push the plasma back when it is disturbed. However, none of these proposed solutions achieves an inherent passive stable confinement; they only try to minimize the impact of having regions with bad confinement properties.
The NOVATRON fusion design is the only concept with this property of increasing magnetic field outwards everywhere in the confinement region.
The shape is the key
It can be shown that the requirement of stronger magnetic field at the edges of the confinement region is equivalent to the plasma seeing magnetic field lines bending away from the plasma, or magnetic field lines being squeezed together as the plasma tries to move outwards.
In an unstable configuration, a force has to be continually adjusted to keep the blue ball in position.
With a stable configuration, the force on the blue ball will just increase if it tries to escape up and over the rim.
The NOVATRON configuration achieves these properties in all directions, which no fusion concept has ever done previously. Like a ball inside a bowl, the plasma will be pushed back by the repelling magnetic force when trying to escape its magnetic confinement. This brilliant design simplifies the engineering required for a fully operating fusion reactor.
How does the NOVATRON stack up?
Stable confinement
NOVATRON's concave magnetic field design ensure plasma stability and guarantees confinement.
Continuous fusion power production
A very important aspect of the reactor's confinement principle, is the ability to run the fusion process continuously. The fully concave external magnetic field requires no ramping of currents to produce stabilising magnetic fields. The symmetry of the reactor, and the fact that it has open magnetic field lines, makes it a lot easier to add fuel and remove by-products continuously during operations.
Conventional electromagnets
Even in power plant-scale reactors it might very well be feasible to use conventional copper electromagnets instead of ultra-expensive cryogenically cooled superconducting magnets. This has a huge impact on complexity and cost.
Low design complexity
Compared to other fusion reactor designs, the NOVATRON reactor is less complex, which enables higher reliability, less maintenance and as a result, is more cost-efficient.
Competitive cost of energy produced
NOVATRON has a lower complexity which makes it less expensive to build a power plant and maintain it. Also, it has a higher efficiency due to continuous fusion reactions where other concepts have more of a start-and-stop process. This will all in all result in a competitive cost of energy produced, comparable with wind- and solar power.
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Making fusion power a reality requires more than just a breakthrough in reactor design. Here are five of NOVATRON's advantages:
Power to the grid
A fusion power plant from an industry perspective
Building a power plant is not done in the blink of an eye.
For a start, you need a reactor, turbines converting heat to electricity, control systems, a fuel logistics center, several buildings to house it all, and infrastructure to supply the plant with the power to ignite the plasma and distribute the electricity to the grid.
All this requires expertise and resources from many disciplines and industries. Therefore, to not waste time, as humanity needs fusion power soon, we are already creating an industry consortium to start planning for a fully operational fusion plant.
