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NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.
This study was supported by Grant No. DE-AT01-02ER54676 between the National Academy of Sciences and the Department of Energy. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the organizations or agencies that provided support for the project.
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Cover: The Tokamak Test Fusion Reactor (TFTR) was a fusion experiment at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory that achieved one of the world’s first partially burning plasmas in the 1990s. Image courtesy of Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.
Copyright 2004 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
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THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES
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BURNING PLASMA ASSESSMENT COMMITTEE
JOHN F. AHEARNE,
Sigma Xi, Duke University,
Co-chair
RAYMOND FONCK,
University of Wisconsin at Madison,
Co-chair
JOHN N. BAHCALL,
Institute for Advanced Study
GORDON A. BAYM,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
IRA B. BERNSTEIN,
Yale University
STEPHEN C. COWLEY,
Imperial College London
EDWARD A. FRIEMAN,
Science Applications International Corporation
WALTER GEKELMAN,
University of California at Los Angeles
JOSEPH HEZIR,
EOP Group, Inc.
WILLIAM M. NEVINS,
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
RONALD R. PARKER,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
CLAUDIO PELLEGRINI,
University of California at Los Angeles
BURTON RICHTER,
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
CLIFFORD M. SURKO,
University of California at San Diego
TONY S. TAYLOR,
General Atomics
MICHAEL A. ULRICKSON,
Sandia National Laboratories
MICHAEL C. ZARNSTORFF,
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
ELLEN G. ZWEIBEL,
University of Wisconsin at Madison
Staff
DONALD C. SHAPERO, Director,
Board on Physics and Astronomy
TIMOTHY I. MEYER, Study Director (from August 2003)
MICHAEL H. MOLONEY, Study Director (May 2002–July 2003)
PLASMA SCIENCE COMMITTEE
CARY B. FOREST,
University of Wisconsin at Madison,
Chair
JONATHAN ARONS,
University of California at Berkeley
CHRISTINA BACK,
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
MICHAEL S. BARNES,
Applied Materials
ALLEN BOOZER,
Columbia University
JOHN CARY,
University of Colorado at Boulder
CYNTHIA A. CATTELL,
University of Minnesota
WALTER GEKELMAN,
University of California at Los Angeles
MICHAEL A. LIEBERMAN,
University of California at Berkeley
CLAUDIO PELLEGRINI,
University of California at Los Angeles
DMITRI RYUTOV,
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
STEWART J. ZWEBEN,
Princeton University
Staff
DONALD C. SHAPERO, Director,
Board on Physics and Astronomy
TIMOTHY I. MEYER, Program Officer
PAMELA A. LEWIS, Project Associate
NELSON QUIÑONES, Project Assistant
BOARD ON PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY
BURTON RICHTER,
Stanford University,
Chair
ANNEILA I. SARGENT,
California Institute of Technology,
Vice Chair
ELIHU ABRAHAMS,
Rutgers State University
JONATHAN BAGGER,
Johns Hopkins University
GORDON A. BAYM,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
WILLIAM EATON,
National Institutes of Health
RAYMOND FONCK,
University of Wisconsin at Madison
WENDY L. FREEDMAN,
Carnegie Observatories
LAURA H. GREEN,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
FRANCES HELLMAN,
University of California at San Diego
ERIC P. IPPEN,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
LINDA J. (LEE) MAGID,
University of Tennessee at Knoxville
THOMAS M. O’NEIL,
University of California at San Diego
JULIA M. PHILLIPS,
Sandia National Laboratories
JOSEPH H. TAYLOR, JR.,
Princeton University
THOMAS N. THEIS,
IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
C. MEGAN URRY,
Yale University
CARL E. WIEMAN,
University of Colorado/JILA
Staff
DONALD C. SHAPERO, Director
ROBERT L. RIEMER, Senior Program Officer
BRIAN D. DEWHURST, Research Associate
TIMOTHY I. MEYER, Program Officer
PAMELA A. LEWIS, Project Associate
NELSON QUIÑONES, Project Assistant
VAN AN, Financial Associate
Preface
The goal of achieving a sustained thermonuclear fusion burn capable of generating power in some future reactor has been a long-term research goal for the United States and the global research community. In the past decade great strides have been made toward that goal, leading the fusion research program to a decision point—is it ready to take the step of executing a burning plasma experiment, and how should that step be taken?
Given the considerable federal investment over several decades, the fusion program has rightly been the subject of many reviews and assessments—by the National Research Council (NRC), the Department of Energy’s Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee, and the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology—and has also been the subject of congressional review. Most recently the question has been whether the United States should include a burning plasma experiment—one in which at least 50 percent of the energy needed to sustain the fusion reaction is generated from within the plasma—in the Department of Energy’s magnetic fusion program as operated by the Office of Fusion Energy Sciences (OFES). A burning plasma experiment is a key scientific milestone on the road to the development of fusion power.
The Burning Plasma Assessment Committee was established by the National Research Council under the Board on Physics and Astronomy with oversight and guidance from the Plasma Science Committee in July 2002 at the request of DOE’s Office of Science.1 The committee was charged with assessing (1) the importance
of a burning plasma experimental program, (2) the scientific and technical readiness to undertake a burning plasma experimental program, and (3) the plan for the U.S. magnetic fusion burning plasma experimental program. It was asked to make recommendations on the program strategy aimed at maximizing the yield of scientific and technical understanding as the foundation for the future development of fusion as an energy source (see Appendix A for the full text of the task).
The Burning Plasma Assessment Committee was established to conduct the latest of several NRC studies that have considered the direction of the U.S. fusion program over the past decade. Both the 1995 report Plasma Science: From Fundamental Research to Technological Applications2 and the 2001 report of the Fusion Science Assessment Committee (FUSAC)3 provided vital background for the Burning Plasma Assessment Committee in carrying out this study. Plasma Science concluded that many opportunities for fundamental scientific exploration were missed because of the then-schedule-driven energy development mandate of the fusion energy program. The report also recommended that, to aid the development of fusion and other energy-related programs, the Department of Energy should provide increased support for basic plasma science. The FUSAC study concluded that “a program organized around critical science goals will also maximize progress toward a practical fusion power source.”4
The third item of the committee’s task was to provide “an independent review and assessment of the plan for the U.S. magnetic fusion burning plasma experimental program” (emphasis added; see Appendix A). None of the inertial confinement fusion (ICF) programs are considered in this report since they are not part of the magnetic fusion program and, with the exception of the small, heavy ion program, are not part of a program aiming toward the use of fusion for commercial energy purposes. The major work of DOE’s large program in ICF is the study of high energy density physics using implosions driven by energy deposition from focused laser beams and plasma pinches. A major facility will be the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, as well as the Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories. Much of the ICF work is done as part of the nuclear weapons work in the National Nuclear Security Administration, a section of the Department of Energy. A small program is beginning to explore the use of heavy ions for ICF energy deposition.
The membership of the Burning Plasma Assessment Committee was designed to bring together experts in fusion science, plasma science, and other areas (see Appendix G) to consider the charge. At the committee’s first meeting, Raymond Orbach, director of DOE’s Office of Science, requested an interim report by the end of 2002, addressing two aspects of the charge—the importance of a burning plasma experiment for fusion energy, and the scientific and technical readiness to undertake a burning plasma experiment—and, in particular, to provide advice on the question of U.S. reentry into the negotiations for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).5 Issued on December 20, 2002, the interim report6 recommended that the United States reenter the ITER negotiations with a view to full participation in the experiment. Following publication of the report, President Bush announced that the U.S. government would rejoin the negotiations, and a U.S. team has since become active.7
In the context of possible U.S. reentry into the ITER negotiations, the interim report offered some preliminary findings and conclusions with respect to the importance and readiness issues, but left much of the charge to the committee unaddressed. After completing its interim report, the committee focused on the remainder of its charge and, most importantly, on the consideration of a strategy for “maximizing the yield of scientific and technical understanding as the foundation for the future development of fusion as an energy source” (see Appendix A).
In addressing its task the committee considered questions relevant to the charge that included, but were not limited to, the following:
-
What are the important scientific and technical problems to be addressed in the burning plasma experimental program?
-
To what degree will the solutions further the development of fusion energy in magnetic-confinement systems generally or in tokamaks specifically?
-
What is the scientific interest in these problems?
-
To what degree can individual problems be investigated in smaller, less costly experiments, and to what degree does satisfactory understanding
5 |
ITER will be a burning plasma experiment based on the tokamak concept—the leading magnetic-confinement fusion configuration, whose name comes from the Russian word for a toroidally (or doughnut) shaped magnetic field. ITER is expected to be larger than existing tokamaks, with a major radius of 5 to 8 m, and is expected to use superconducting magnets to confine the hot plasma. |
6 |
The text of the Burning Plasma Assessment Committee’s interim report is reproduced in Appendix E of this report and is available online at http://books.nap.edu/openbook/NI000487/html/index.html. |
7 |
The negotiations to start the ITER project are being attended by the European Union, Russia, Japan, China, South Korea, Canada, and the United States. |
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depend on integration of the phenomena in a single burning plasma experiment?
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What are the merits and limitations of the principal realizations currently proposed for a burning plasma experiment, and to what degree can each realization address the problems identified in the answer to the first question?
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Does the plan for a burning plasma experimental program envision sufficient diagnostics, theory, and technology support to generate good understanding of the problems to be investigated?
-
What are the implications of a given experiment for the future development of the program?
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Will the burning plasma experimental program be well integrated with the rest of the U.S. fusion program?
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Will it be well integrated with international efforts in fusion research?
The committee’s task was a challenging one. In considering the questions listed above and in approaching the execution of its charge, the committee received important input from the fusion community and others—at its formal meetings8 and via an e-mail solicitation to the plasma community and a town meeting held at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Plasma Physics. The committee extends its gratitude to the community for this input, and in particular thanks the organizers of and participants in the Fusion Workshop held in Snowmass, Colorado, in July 2002. The committee commends all of those involved in the Snowmass project for providing a valuable technical assessment of the options for achieving a burning plasma experiment.
In particular, the committee expresses its appreciation to the following individuals for their contributions to its work and the completion of this report: Bruno Coppi, Stephen Dean, Robert Goldston, Robert Hirsch, Karl Lackner, Michael Mauel, Dale Meade, Gerald Navratil, Stewart Prager, Marshall Rosenbluth, Ned Sauthoff, and Ronald Stambaugh. The committee also expresses its deepest gratitude to Michael Moloney, the NRC study director for this committee, and to Donald Shapero, director of the Board on Physics and Astronomy, and Thomas O’Neil, chair of the Plasma Science Committee, who put tremendous and productive effort into defining the scope of this study with colleagues on the Plasma Science Committee and at the Department of Energy. Finally, we thank Timothy Meyer, who, after Michael Moloney left, took over and successfully managed the
8 |
Agendas for the committee’s four meetings are provided in Appendix B. |
difficult task of the final steps in the National Research Council’s review process and brought this report through to publication.
In presenting this report, we would like to thank our colleagues on the committee. The diversity of the committee’s areas of expertise was its greatest strength, leading to many difficult questions being asked in our open and closed discussions. The committee’s findings, conclusions, and recommendations are presented with the hope that, as the nation faces financially challenging times, this report will help inform the difficult decisions that must be taken to support an important field of science. It behooves the fusion community and those who support its work to develop a prioritized strategy to provide a realistic framework for the advancement of a science that has the potential to lead to an exciting new energy source.
John F. Ahearne, Co-chair, and Raymond Fonck, Co-chair
Burning Plasma Assessment Committee
Acknowledgment of Reviewers
This report has been reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise, in accordance with procedures approved by the National Research Council’s Report Review Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making its published report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We wish to thank the following individuals for their review of this report:
Jack Conner, United Kingdom Atomic Energy Agency,
Ronald C. Davidson, Princeton University,
W. Kenneth Davis, Bechtel Corporation (retired),
Val L. Fitch, Princeton University,
Cary B. Forest, University of Wisconsin at Madison,
Harold K. Forsen, National Academy of Engineering,
T. Kenneth Fowler, University of California at Berkeley,
William Happer, Princeton University,
David Meyerhofer, University of Rochester, and
Marshall N. Rosenbluth, University of California at San Diego.
Although the reviewers listed above have provided many constructive comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the conclusions or recommendations, nor did they see the final draft of the report before its release. The review of this report was overseen by Louis J. Lanzerotti (Lucent Technologies) and Charles F. Kennel (University of California at San Diego). Appointed by the National Research Council, they were responsible for making certain that an independent examination of this report was carried out in accordance with institutional procedures and that all review comments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content of this report rests entirely with the authoring committee and the institution.