A D-3He fusion reactor with an edge radiating layer

The possibility of operations with advanced fuels in high temperature, high-β plasmas is investigated. At high β values, diamagnetic effects reduce the toroidal field strength in the plasma core and tend to localize the synchrotron radiation source in the outer part of the plasma column. Thus, the core energy balance is not affected by synchrotron radiation losses, but a large amount of the fusion power is radiated by the edge and the divertor power load is decreased. A small fraction of the radiated power can be recirculated for non-inductive current drive, to compensate for the large amount of bootstrap current, naturally present in such configurations. In this scheme, synchrotron radiation is also used to recover the fusion power, by direct conversion to electric power. (author)