Fundamentals of Fusion Energy Generation &Tokamaks

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Description:

Syllabus:

World energy landscape, climate change quantified, fusion energy and its role; Fusion reactions, fusion versus chemical and fission reactions, binding energy curve; Historical perspective of fusion energy: from hydrogen bomb to ITER; Fusion cross-section, mean-free path and collision frequency, reaction rate and fusion power density, radiation losses and Bremsstrahlung; Power balance in a fusion reactor, concept of energy confinement time, ignition and gain, Lawson criterion, thermal stability; Basic design of a fusion reactor: configuration, engineering and physics constraints, reactor parameters; Fusion plasma: principles of Debye shielding, AC shielding, collective effects; Larmor radii and frequencies; Particle motion in a plasma: gyro motion, ExB drift, grad B and curvature drifts; Coloumb collisions in a plasma: derivation and physical consequences; Two-fluid model: conservation of mass, momentum and energy, coupling to Maxwell’s equations; Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) model: plasma equilibrium and general properties, toroidal force balance; Fusion devices: tokamaks and stellarators, their properties; the Grad-Shafranov equation; MHD stability: general picture, linear stability and the energy principle, Ideal MHD modes: kink modes and vertical displacement events (VDE), Resistive MHD stability and tearing modes; Disruptive instabilites in tokamak plasmas, current state-of-the-art and key challenges to fusion energy realization

References:

[1] J. Freidberg, Plasma Physics and Fusion Energy, Cambridge University Press, 2007

[2] J. Wesson, Tokamaks, 4th edition, Oxford University Press, 2011

[3] H. Zohm, Magnetohydrodynamic Stability of Tokamaks, Wiley-VCH, 2015

[4] J. Freidberg, Ideal MHD, Cambridge University Press, 2014

[5] H.P. Goedbloed and S. Poedts, Principles of Magnetohydrodynamics, Cambridge University Press, 2004