Fusion heating technology

John Lawson established the criterion that in order to produce more energy from fusion than is necessary to heat the plasma and replenish the radiation losses, a minimum value for both the product of plasma density and confinement time t, and the temperature must be achieved. There are two types of plasma heating: neutral beam and electromagnetic wave heating. A neutral beam system is shown. Main development work on negative ion beamlines has focused on the difficult problem of the production of high current sources. The development of a 30 keV-1 ampere multisecond source module is close to being accomplished. In electromagnetic heating, the launcher, which provides the means of coupling the power to the plasma, is most important. The status of heating development is reviewed. Electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH), lower hybrid heating (HHH), and ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH) are reviewed