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Published by Fusion Energy Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Building 5700 P.O. Box 2008 Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6169, USA
Editor: James A. Rome Issue 115 June 2008
E-Mail: jar@ornl.gov Phone (865) 482-5643
On the Web at http://www.ornl.gov/sci/fed/stelnews
NCSX experiment terminated
Under Secretary for Science of the U. S. Department of
Energy (DOE), Raymond Orbach issues the following
statement on May 23:
Future of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
(PPPL)
“In late 2006, it became clear that National Compact Stellarator
Experiment (NCSX) construction project would
not be able to meet its approved baseline total project cost
of $102M or its completion date of July 2009. Since then,
DOE, Princeton University, and PPPL have worked extensively
together to understand the issues and plot a course
of action that maximizes the benefits for the scientific
community and the taxpayers, and ensures an exciting
path for PPPL research well into the future. Following several
internal and external reviews over the past 18 months,
it has been concluded that the budget increases, schedule
delays and continuing uncertainties of the NCSX construction
project necessitate its closure, and that PPPL's future
as a world-leading center of fusion energy and plasma sciences
is more assured by a renewed focus on the successful
Spherical Torus confinement concept.
“The Office of Science always weighs the scientific benefits
to be obtained from facilities against the cost to the
taxpayer — in this case the escalating costs and remaining
uncertainties make continuation of the construction project
untenable. The latest cost estimate is $170M with an
August 2013 scheduled completion. An Office of Science
review (April 2008) concluded that the project has not yet
met the requirements needed to approve a new baseline
cost and schedule. This puts the future of research at PPPL
in unnecessary peril, and increases the burden on the DOE
fusion energy sciences program. It would require the premature
closure of the Spherical Torus experiment (NSTX),
a proven, productive, world-leading scientific facility,
while creating an uncertain gap in research capabilities at
PPPL.
“This would result in a loss of opportunities for a large
number of collaborators in the research community and
constrain the ability to start new initiatives during the
ITER era.
“The highest priority of the U.S. fusion program is participation
in the International ITER burning plasma experiment,
which is based on the tokamak concept. The
Spherical Torus is closely related to the tokamak, and
experiments planned for the next several years in the
NSTX facility promise many exciting discoveries that
should directly impact our ability to understand the new
plasma regimes expected in ITER. The Spherical Torus
may also prove to be a prototype for the next step for the
U.S. domestic fusion program. Planned upgrades for the
Spherical Torus experiment at PPPL can keep this facility
In this issue . . .
NCSX experiment terminated
After a series of reviews, the U. S. Department of
Energy decided to terminate the NCSX construction
project. .................................................................... 1
TJ-II achieves new performance level
Because of the substantial increase in available heating
power and in the plasma density control provided
by the lithium-coated first wall, TJ-II has achieved
(domestic) record values of electron line density (7 ×
1019 particles/m3) and plasma energy content (5 kJ).
................................................................................ 2
SIESTA: A Scalable Iterative Equilibrium Solver
for Toroidal Applications
A new three-dimensional code called SIESTA (Scalable
Iterative Equilibrium Solver for Toroidal Applications)
has been developed to allow the computation of
stable MHD equilibria in the presence of magnetic
islands and stochastic regions. An energy minimization
method is used, together with a novel preconditioned
Newton method, to obtain well-converged
equilibrium solutions on very fine meshes. Work is
under way to port the code in a a scalable way to run
on the Jaguar supercomputer at ORNL................... 3