The construction and first operation of the S-1 spheromak

The spheromak is an axially symmetric toroidal plasma configuration which has a toroidal field that is entirely generated by plasma currents and poloidal fields that are generated in part by external coils and in part by a toroidal plasma current. In the electrodeless inductive spheromak formation scheme employed in the S-1 spheromak none of the coils links the plasma so that a reactor can be imagined in which the plasma can be translated from the formation region to a reaction chamber where most of the thermonuclear burn would occur. The complex element of this scheme is the flux core that provides the poloidal and toroidal flux changes required. The basic ideas of inductive formation of inductive formation of spheromaks were tested in Proto S-1A and S-1C. In the Proto S-1C device a spheromak plasma with major and minor radii 12cm and 8 cm respectively that was generated on a slow time scale of 50μsec and lifetimes as long as 100μsec. The gross tilting and sliding instabilities of the spheromak were stabilized experimentally by simple passive coil systems