Transcript Slide 1

Summary and Closing Remarks
Farrokh Najmabadi
UC San Diego
Presentation to ARIES Program Peer Review
August 29, 2013, Washington , DC
Nature of Power Plant Studies has
evolved in time.
 Concept Exploration (< 1990)
 Limited physics/engineering trade-offs due to lack of physic
understanding (the only credible vision was a large, expensive
pulsed tokamak with many engineering challenges).
 Concept Definition ( ~ 1990-2005)
 Finding credible embodiments (Credible in a “global” sense).
 Better physics understanding allowed optimization of steadystate plasma operation and physics/engineering trade-offs.
 Development of high-performance blanket concepts.
 Concept Feasibility and Optimization (> 2010)
 Detailed analysis of subsystems to resolve feasibility issues.
 Definition of R&D requirements (e.g., material properties)
 Trade-offs among extrapolation and attractiveness in order to
guide R&D.
Summary of ARIES-ACT Research
 ARIES-ACT study is re-examining the tokamak power plant
space to understand risk and trade-offs of higher physics and
engineering performance with special emphasis on PMI/PFC
and off-normal events.
 Detailed physics analysis with modern computational tools are



used. Many new physics issues are included.
The new system approach indicate a robust design window for this
class of power plants.
In-elastic analysis of component including Birth-to-death modeling
and fracture mechanics indicate a higher performance PFCs are
possible. Many issues/properties for material development &
optimization are identified.
Many engineering improvements: He-cooled ferritic steel structural
ring/shield, Detailed flow paths and manifolding to reduce 3D MHD
effects, Identification of new material for the vacuum vessel …
F. Najmabadi, ARIES Peer Review closing, 29 August 2013 (3/6)
ARIES-ACT Publications (49 papers)
 ARIES-ACT1 final report to be published as a special issue
of Fusion Science & Technology (8 articles)
 15 papers in TOFE-19 (published in FS&T vol. 60)
 12 papers in TOFE-20 (published in FD&T vol. 64)
 13 other articles in FS&T, FED, SOFE, etc.
 These papers can be downloaded from the ARIES web
site. (http://aries.ucsd.edu/ARIES/DOCS/bib.shtml)
F. Najmabadi, ARIES Peer Review cosing, 29 August 2013 (4/6)
Some ARIES Town Meetings
Date
Location
Subject
Mar. 2-3, 1995
May 10, 1995
ANL
ANL
Jan. 31, 1996
UCSD
ARIES Workshop on Liquid Target Divertors
ARIES Town Meeting on Structural Materials
ARIES Town Meeting on Low Aspect Ratio Spherical
Tokamaks
June 19, 1997
May 6-7, 1998
UW
UCSD
Jan. 18-19, 2000
Mar. 6-7, 2001
May 5-6, 2003
Sep. 15-16, 2005
Dec. 10-12, 2008
May 2010
ARIES Town Meeting on Designing with Brittle Materials
ARIES Town Meeting on ST Physics
International Town Meeting on SiC/SiC Design & Material
ORNL
Issues for Fusion Systems
Livermore ARIES Tritium Town Meeting
Livermore ARIES Town Meeting on Liquid Wall Chamber Dynamics
PPPL
ARIES Compact Stellarator Physics Town Meeting
International Workshop on High-Heat-Flux Components’
UCSD
Readiness to Proceed from Near Term Fusion Systems to
Power Plants
UCSD
Town Meeting on Edge Physics Modeling and
experimental validation for fusion power plants.
National ARIES Program has been a
high-leverage research effort
 High Quality of Science: Detailed and in-depth analysis is necessary to make
scientific progress.
 High-Leverage Research: Integrated design & analysis beyond current
experiments identifies key R&D Issues.
 Community input and consensus: An environment is created for fusion
scientists to investigate fusion systems together. Team members bring in the
latest information from R&D program. State-of-art analysis, innovation, and highleverage issues are readily transferred back to the R&D program.
 Interaction with other disciplines: Impact of latest development in other
scientific fields on fusion systems are evaluated.
 Impact on Education: Approximately 2/3 of the research is performed by
universities (UCSD, U. Wisc., GIT). Seven students were supported by this
activity last year.
 A high-leverage niche on the international fusion program. It is recognized
internationally as a credible driving force towards an attractive end product and
influences world-wide fusion research.