Stable heating and burn simulations of a reversed-field pinch reactor

The reversed-field pinch provides three significant advantages as a fusion reactor: it can be ohmically heated, it operates at high β, and it is not restricted to a small aspect ratio. Experimentally, the best understood startup scenarios are self reversal, aided reversal and fast-field programming. On the basis of results from a one-dimensional transport and stability code, an ideal MHD stable startup and burn procedure is described in this paper. Pitch programming and a gas feed at the wall are used. This adiabatic startup is characterized by a high pitch near the minor axis and hollow current and pressure profiles. Ideally, it would be possible to have a reactor startup and burn without highly turbulent processes to deposit excessive amounts of energy on the wall. Potential problems of resistive instabilities and plasma-wall interactions are discussed