The first compact ring device (EAST-CT) for feeding the core of medium and large Tokamak in the world completed the first plasma discharge on February 4, which indicated that the compact ring device had successfully achieved the phased key objective after 7 months of design, construction, installation and testing. The device will be tested on EAST (Oriental Super Ring Tokamak) to lay a solid foundation for the verification of new core charging technology for future fusion reactors such as CFETR.

China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR) has put forward the overall scientific and technological goal of realizing tritium self-sustaining. Increasing the combustion rate of tritium can significantly reduce the design requirements and construction cost of tritium plant and cladding for fusion reactor. The burning rate of tritium is a difficult problem to be solved in CFETR and future fusion power plants. Direct injection of fuel particles (deuterium and tritium) into the core plasma can not only significantly improve the fusion power of the core plasma, but also significantly improve the combustion rate of tritium, so as to achieve the goal of tritium self-sustaining in CFETR. Compact ring refers to the high-density plasma cluster formed by the ionization of gas by high-voltage pulse power supply. It has the characteristics of stable structure, long service life, high density and high speed. It is considered to be the technology that can most realize the core feeding of fusion reactor in the future. At present, the international research on compact rings mainly focuses on weak magnetic field magnetic confinement devices, such as STOR-M Tokamak in Canada and C2 field inverse configuration device in the United States.

Last June, with the support of the projects of Institute of Energy of Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center, a team composed of researchers from Institute of Plasma Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei University of Technology and Shihezi University began the development of the first compact ring core feeding system (EAST-CT) for medium and large Tokamaks in the world. According to the characteristics of strong magnetic field and high discharge parameters of EAST Tokamak, the research team comprehensively optimized the structural design of the compact ring host system and improved the construction and installation process. The research team also independently designed a set of experimental test platform simulating EAST discharge environment, which provided a reliable guarantee for the optimization of feeding parameters. After seven months, the construction of the compact ring device was completed efficiently and the first plasma gun was successfully realized.

The compact ring R & D team will continue to carry out discharge optimization and develop compact ring technology. Through cooperation with research institutions and universities at home and abroad, it will promote the rapid application of compact ring technology in core charging and fracture mitigation of fusion reactor so as to help nuclear fusion research and serve the development of energy technology in the future.

Compact Ring Host System and Test Platform

First Plasma Discharge

Some Members of the Compact Ring Development Team