The ORNL plasma fueling program

Advanced plasma fueling systems for magnetic confinement devices are under development at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The general approach is to produce and accelerate frozen hydrogen-isotope pellets at speeds ranging from 1 to 2 km/s and higher. Recently, ORNL provided pneumatic-based pellet fueling systems for two of the world's largest tokamak experiments, the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) and the Joint European Torus (JET). A new, versatile, centrifuge-type injector is being installed on the Tore Supra tokamak. Also, a new, simplified, eight-shot injector has been developed, and injectors based on this design are operating on the Princeton Beta Experiment (PBX) and the ORNL Advanced Toroidal Facility (ATF). In addition to these confinement-physics-related activities, ORNL is pursuing advanced technologies to achieve pellet velocities significantly in excess of 2 km/s, and has carried out a tritium proof of principle experiment in which the fabrication and acceleration of tritium pellets were demonstrated. These ongoing activities are described.<>