Results of Compact Stellarator engineering trade studies

Abstract

A number of technical requirements and performance criteria can drive stellarator costs, e.g., tight tolerances, accurate coil positioning, low aspect ratio (compactness), choice of assembly strategy, metrology, and complexity of the stellarator coil geometry. With the completion of a seven-year design and construction effort of the National Compact Stellarator Experiment (NCSX) it is useful to interject the NCSX experience along with the collective experiences of the NCSX stellarator community to improving the stellarator configuration. Can improvements in maintenance be achieved by altering the stellarator magnet configuration with changes in the coil shape or with the combination of trim coils? Can a mechanical configuration be identified that incorporates a partial set of shaped fixed stellarator coils along with some removable coil set to enhance the overall machine maintenance? Are there other approaches that will simplify the concepts, improve access for maintenance, reduce overall cost and improve the reliability of a stellarator based power plant? Using ARIES-CS and NCSX as reference cases, alternative approaches have been studied and developed to show how these modifications would favorably impact the stellarator power plant and experimental projects. The current status of the alternate stellarator configurations being developed will be described and a comparison made to the recently designed and partially built NCSX device and the ARIES-CS reactor design study.