Results from D—T experiments on TFTR and implications for achieving an ignited plasma

Progress in the performance of tokamak devices has enabled not only the production of significant bursts of fusion energy from deuterium–tritium plasmas in the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) and the Joint European Torus (JET) but, more importantly, the initial study of the physics of burning magnetically confined plasmas. As a result of the worldwide research on tokamaks, the scientific and technical issues for achieving an ignited plasma are better understood and the remaining questions more clearly defined. The principal research topics that have been studied on TFTR are transport, magnetohydrodynamic stability and energetic–particle confinement. The integration of separate solutions to problems in each of these research areas has also been of major interest. Although significant advances (such as the reduction of turbulent transport by means of internal transport barriers, identification of the theoretically predicted bootstrap current, and the study of the confinement of energetic fusion α–particles) have been made, interesting and important scientific and technical issues remain for achieving a magnetic fusion energy reactor. In this paper, the implications of the TFTR experiments for overcoming these remaining issues will be discussed.

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