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US 4,734,246 AGranted
Elongated toroid fusion device
AssigneeGA Technologies Inc.
InventorsTihiro Ohkawa, Ming Chu, Peter A. Politzer, Reagan W. Moore
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A toroidal fusion device with an elongated axial cross section is described which is capable of ignition without auxiliary heating and with modest toroidal magnetic field. The device is based on the principle that for elongated toroids the toroidal current density in the plasma at ignition is subject to a limit which is proportional to the product of the elongation and the toroidal magnetic field. The elongation is made greater than about 4. The aspect ratio is preferably between about 3 and 10.
Claims7
A device for achieving ignition of a plasma with ohmic heating comprising:
- means for defining a toroidal plasma chamber, and confining gas therein, and
- means including electrically conductive coils for generating plasma within said chamber and for confining and shaping such plasma substantially into and filling a predetermined single region of said chamber without an axisymmetric internal separatrix and ohmically heating the confined plasma to ignition, said predetermined region being toroidal with a major axis defining an axial direction parallel thereto and a transaxial direction perpendicular to said axis and having an axial cross section with an elongation, k, greater than 4, where k is the ratio of the maximum axial dimension of said cross section to the maximum transaxial dimension of said cross section.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.