Engineering needs of a TRACT fusion reactor program

The TRACT concept is under development as a vehicle for developing small fusion reactors based on compact torus (CT) plasmas. The success of the TRACT program could result in pilot plant fusion facilities which are capable of producing net electric power at about the cost of current large plasma physics experiments. The physics basis for TRACT is a CT plasmas formed by a carefully programmed field-reversed theta pinch technique in which the plasma is heated to ignition temperatures by axial implosion, followed by adiabatic compression. The formation and axial implosion, principles have beeen demonstrated in experiments at Mathematical Sciences Northwest, Inc. as well as in the Soviet Union