The
Tokamak Physics Experiment (TPX), a superconducting
tokamak which is the next step in the US fusion program, is in a preliminary design
phase and awaits approval to begin construction at the Princeton Plasma Physics
Laboratory. Some members of our staff have system level engineering responsibilities,
and responsibility for the design and R&D for the poloidal field coil subsystem,
and for magnet system safety and reliability analyses. Extensive structural and
magnetic analyses of the magnet systems have been performed at MIT/PSFC using
the ANSYS code.
We
have also been engaged in advanced design for the all-superconducting International
Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).
This includes Structural Analysis; conductor design, and R&D; quench simulation,
and test; and fault analyses among other responsilities. This facility is proposed
for construction during the late 1990s by an international collaborative effort.
The peak fields in that device are projected to be 13 tesla, with current densities
of 4 kA/cm2, and stored energies of 50 GJ. Engineering teams from all four participating
parties (US, RF, EC and Japan) have chosen to design magnets that will be wound
using variants of the cable in conduit superconductor (CICC)
developed at MIT/PSFC.