Development of Advanced Stellarator With Identical Permanent Magnet Blocks

Abstract

Stellarator offers an attractive approach to fusion energy, but difficulties in fabricating and assembling complicated 3D coils with tight tolerance requirements severely retard its development. Recent study indicates the coils can be dramatically simplified by introducing permanent magnets. However, the existing designs use permanent magnets with various shapes, sizes and even arbitrary magnetization orientations, so that their fabrication and assembly may be even more difficult and costly than the 3D coils. Here, we propose an innovative strategy to design advanced stellarators with standardized permanent magnet blocks, such as identical cubes. This new magnet design will substantially reduce the difficulty and cost of magnet fabrication and assembly. The magnet blocks can be assembled offline in a mounting frame constructed with 3D printing. These innovations significantly lower the engineering barrier for stellarator construction, which potentially opening a new avenue for fast development of the stellarator fusion approach.