Systems assessment of the five Starlite tokamak power plants

The ARIES team has assessed the power-plant attractiveness of the following five tokamak physics regimes: (1) steady state, first stability regime; (2) pulsed, first stability regime; (3) steady state, second stability regime; (4) steady state, reversed shear; and (5) steady state, low aspect ratio. Cost-based systems analysis of these five tokamak physics regimes suggests that an electric power plant based upon a reversed-shear tokamak is significantly more economical than one based on any of the other four physics regimes. Details of this comparative systems analysis are described herein. 11 refs., 3 figs., 1 tab