Events on Monday, October 2nd, 2023
- Plasma Physics (Physics/ECE/NE 922) Seminar
- The High-field Stellarator Path to Fusion Energy pursued by Type One Energy
- Time: 12:00 pm - 1:15 pm
- Place: 1610 Engineering Hall
- Speaker: Thomas Pederson, Type One Energy
- Abstract: Stellarators offer substantial advantages as fusion power plants, including intrinsic steady-state operation, low recirculating power, benign heat loads onto the plasma-facing components (PFCs), and the absence of complications associated with runaway electron beams. These benefits have been shown in a number of experiments, in particular Wendelstein 7-X, which also has shown substantial reduction of neoclassical transport through a careful computational optimisation of the magnetic topology. New optimisation codes are producing stellarator magnetic configurations which are substantially better, in particular with respect to fast-particle confinement.
Owing to the relatively small amount of plasma-generated magnetic field, they are also less self-organized than many other fusion concepts, making their performance more predictable.
Due to these advantages, and recent technological advances allowing substantially higher magnetic field strengths and much more rapid production of the highly three-dimensional hardware needed for stellarators, a fast path to a net-power-producing high-field stellarator first-of-a-kind power plant appears feasible.
This talk will start with a brief introduction to stellarators, then review recent advances in stellarator science and technology, and give an update on Type One Energy’s plans for commercializing stellarator fusion energy.
Biography:
Thomas Sunn Pedersen received his PhD in 2000 from MIT, working on soft-x-ray diagnostics and impurity transport on Alcator C-Mod, advised by Robert Granetz and Miklos Porkolab. That same year he joined the Columbia University faculty, where he oversaw the conception, design and construction of the CNT stellarator, which went into operation in 2004, dedicated to the studies of non-neutral plasmas confined on magnetic surfaces, and the effects of ExB drifts on the confinement of particles in a classical stellarator. In 2011, he left Columbia University to take on the position as Director of Stellarator Edge and Divertor Physics at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, working on the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator, and teaching as a Professor of Physics at the University of Greifswald, Germany, to a fully cooled, quasi-steady-state capable device in 2022. At the start of 2023, he joined the Type One Energy Group as Chief Technology Officer, pursuing a rapid path to high-field stellarator-based fusion net energy production. - Host: Prof. Steffi Diem