IC/P4-9 Thermonuclear Prospects of Modern Mirror Systems

At present, two modern axisymmetric magnetic mirror systems for plasma confinement are studied in the Budker Institute: multi-mirror trap (GOL-3) and gas dynamic trap (GDT). In the case of multi-mirror system GOL-3, a dense plasma (ne ≈ 10m) with temperatures Te ~Ti ≈ 2 keV was obtained. The most important results described in the paper are as follows. It was shown that electron thermal conductance along the magnetic system (12 m) can be suppressed by more than three orders of magnitude. As a result of that, plasma electrons heated by relativistic electron beam (REB) have achieved the temperature Te > 2keV. In the case of multi-mirror geometry a mechanism of fast ion heating was discovered. At last, one should mention that untill now no limitations preventing further growth of plasma parameters in this system have been observed. Estimations of parameters of multi-mirror thermonuclear reactor are given in this paper. Termonuclear prospects of the GDT are not so clear, but the GDT principle of confinement of collisional „warm“ plasma together with the use of oblique injection of fast D, T atoms allows to create an efficient 14 MeV neutron source (NS) for structural materials testing for thermonuclear reactors. The main idea of the GDT NS is as follows. A flux of fast atoms of D and T is injected into a warm plasma under an angle to the axis and captured in it. As a result, a population of sloshing ions of high energy is created. The maximum density of sloshing ions and correspondingly of neutron flux are formed in the vicinities of turning points. Thus, only small part of total area of vacuum chamber (of 1 m) will be irradiated by significant neutron flux density (of order of 2 MW/m). Due to that the tritium consumption should be small enough (~ 0.15 kg/yr). The most important physical results are described in the paper. In particular, demonstration of MHD stabilization of plasma in axisymmetric geometry of magnetic field at β ≈ 60 %, suppression of longitudinal plasma flux by ambipolar effect produced by additional compact mirror trap (CMT) filled with anisotropic plasma with >> Te , a study of Alfven ion-cyclotron (AIC) instability in the CMT with strongly anisotropic ions (W┴/W║ ≈ 35) The status of works on the program of GDT-U is presented