Pellet injector development at ORNL (Oak Ridge National Laboratory)

Advanced plasma fueling systems for magnetic confinement experiments are under development at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The general approach is that of producing and accelerating frozen hydrogenic pellets to speeds in the kilometer-per-second range by either pneumatic (light-gas gun) or mechanical (centrifugal force) techniques. ORNL has recently provided a centrifugal pellet injector for the Tore Supra tokamak and a new, simplified, eight-shot pneumatic injector for the Advanced Toroidal Facility stellarator at ORNL. Hundreds of tritium and DT pellets were accelerated at the Tritium Systems Test Assembly facility at Los Alamos in 1988--89. These experiments, done in a single-shot pipe-gun system, demonstrated the feasibility of forming and accelerating tritium pellets at low {sup 3}He levels. A new, tritium-compatible extruder mechanism is being designed for longer-pulse DT applications. Two-stage light-gas guns and electron beam rocket accelerators for speeds of the order of 2--10 km/s are also under development. Recently, a repeating, two-stage light-gas gun accelerated 10 surrogate pellets at a 1-Hz repetition rate to speeds in the range of 2--3 km/s; and the electron beam rocket accelerator completed initial feasibility and scaling experiments. ORNL has also developed conceptual designs of advanced plasma fueling systems for the Compact Ignition Tokamak and themore » International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.« less