National Compact Stellarator Experiment

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The National Compact Stellarator Experiment (NCSX) is a plasma confinement experiment being conducted at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. First plasma is scheduled to take place in July 2009. It is a variation of the stellarator concept, with a much lower aspect ratio than a typical stellerator. NCSX is one of the first fusion experiments to use massively parallel computing to find the optimal shape for the reactor vessel; one of the advantages of correctly-designed stellerators is that the confined plasma is passively stable when a steady magnetic field is applied, whereas tokamaks require an array of active control strategies to stabilise the plasma, even under a constant magnetic field. Up to 12MW of auxiliary heating power will be available to the NCSX chamber, consisting of 6MW from tangential neutral-beam injection, and 6MW from radio-frequency (RF) heating. Up to 3MW of electron cyclotron heating may also be available in future iterations of the design.

[edit] External link

• NCSX homepage

Fusion power v • d • e
Atomic nucleus | Nuclear fusion | Nuclear power | Nuclear reactor | Timeline of nuclear fusion Plasma physics | Magnetohydrodynamics | Neutron flux | Fusion energy gain factor | Lawson criterion
Methods of fusing nuclei
Magnetic confinement: - Tokamak - Spheromak - Stellarator - Reversed field pinch - Field-Reversed Configuration - Levitated Dipole Inertial confinement: - Laser driven - Z-pinch - Bubble fusion (acoustic confinement) - Fusor (electrostatic confinement) Other forms of fusion: - Muon-catalyzed fusion - Pyroelectric fusion - Migma
List of fusion experiments
Magnetic confinement devices ITER (International) | JET (European) | JT-60 (Japan) | Large Helical Device (Japan) | KSTAR (Korea) | EAST (China) | T-15 (Russia) | DIII-D (USA) | Tore Supra (France) | ASDEX Upgrade (Germany) | TFTR (USA) | NSTX (USA) | NCSX (USA) | UCLA ET (USA) | Alcator C-Mod (USA) | LDX (USA) | H-1NF (Australia) | MAST (UK) | START (UK) | Wendelstein 7-X (Germany) | TCV (Switzerland) | DEMO (Commercial) Inertial confinement devices Laser driven: - NIF (USA) | OMEGA laser (USA) | Nova laser (USA) | Novette laser (USA) | Nike laser (USA) | Shiva laser (USA) | Argus laser (USA) | Cyclops laser (USA) | Janus laser (USA) | Long path laser (USA) | 4 pi laser (USA) | LMJ (France) | Luli2000 (France) | GEKKO XII (Japan) | ISKRA lasers (Russia) | Vulcan laser (UK) | Asterix IV laser (Czech Republic) | HiPER laser (European) Non-laser driven: - Z machine (USA) | PACER (USA) See also: International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility