A tokamak with nearly uniform coil stress based on virial theorem

A novel tokamak concept with a new type of toroidal field (TF) coils and a central solenoid (CS) whose stress is much reduced to a theoretical limit determined by the virial theorem has been devised. Recently, we had developed a tokamak with force-balanced coils (FBCs) which are multi-pole helical hybrid coils combining TF coils and a CS coil. The combination reduces the net electromagnetic force in the direction of major radius. In this work, we have extended the FBC concept using the virial theorem. High-field coils should accordingly have same averaged principal stresses in all directions, whereas conventional FBC reduces stress in the toroidal direction only. Using a shell model, we have obtained the poloidal rotation number of helical coils which satisfy the uniform stress condition, and named the coil as virial-limited coil (VLC). VLC with circular cross section of aspect ratio A=2 reduces maximum stress to 60% compared with that of TF coils. In order to prove the advantage of VLC concept, we have designed a small VLC tokamak Todoroki-II. The plasma discharge in Todoroki-II will be presented. (author)