RF Driven Currents in Fusion Devices

Among the recent achievements lead­ ing to the development of a thermonu­ clear reactor is the generation of plasma currents, of hundred of kiloamperes over several seconds using RF waves, with a record figure of 300 kA. This implies that a tokamak system could be opera­ ted in a steady state or quasi-steady state, which is not possible when the plasma current is produced through a transformer coupling as at present. Suc­ cess in maintaining the plasma current with RF waves with a good efficiency may, moreover, simplify some of the technical problems encountered in buil­ ding a practical reactor based on nuclear fusion.