Argonne Plasma Engineering Experiment (APEX) tokamak

This paper describes the design and operation of the Argonne Plasma Engineering Experiment (APEX) tokamak. This machine was designed to provide a high performance plasma at a minimum cost, thus combining, to some extent, the high current densities, long pulse duration, and flexibility of operation of large, multipurpose machines, with the low cost of small machines. The APEX tokamak was designed specifically for studies in plasma-wall interactions and rf heating and current drive, and some tradeoffs were made in order to optimize the device for this purpose. The general design, however, should be quite applicable to other uses and could be fairly easily scaled up or down to fit available power supplies and needs. Special features of this design included use of the self-centering force of the toroidal field (TF) coil to simplify the mechanical design of the coils and digital equilibrium field (EF) control