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UKAEA-STEP-PR(26)122025
The Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) is the UK’s flagship program to design a prototype fusion power plant capable of delivering net electricity to the grid. Due to geometric constraints in spherical tokamaks, STEP is being developed for fully non-inductive operation, relying primarily on microwav…
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UKAEA-CCFE-PR(25)3662025
This study presents the validation of the frequency-domain finite element code ERMES 20.0, benchmarked against Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) solvers. The simulations focus on Ordinary–Extraordinary (O–X) mode conversion in the Electron Bernstein Wave (EBW) regime of the MAST Upgrade experiment. Validation is performed in terms of mode c…
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UKAEA-STEP-PR(24)232024
Electron Bernstein waves (EBWs) are theorised to efficiently drive current in spherical tokamak power plants, e.g. Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP). At high temperatures (Te ≳4keV), relativistic effects can significantly impact wave propagation. This work presents relativistic calculations of EBW wave propagation, damping, and curre…
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UKAEA-STEP-PR(26)052024
STEP is a spherical tokamak prototype power plant that is being designed to demonstrate net electric power. The design phase involves the exploitation of plasma models to optimise fusion performance subject to satisfying various physics and engineering constraints. A modelling workflow, including integrated core plasma modelling, MHD stability a…
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UKAEA-STEP-PR(25)272023
Electron Bernstein current drive (EBCD) systems are sensitive to plasma and launch conditions, and therefore require large parametric scans to optimise their design. One particular bottleneck in the simulation workflow is quasilinear modelling of current drive efficiency. Linear adjoint models are an attractive alternative, offering a ∼103× spee…
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UKAEA-CCFE-PR(23)1662023
MAST-Upgrade (MAST-U) is undergoing several enhancements to deliver increased performance and functionality. One such enhancement is the design, development, and implementation of an Electron Bernstein Wave (EBW) Heating and Current Drive (HCD) System. The MAST-U EBW System aims to provide experimental data for model validation, and to provide a…
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UKAEA-STEP-CP(24)022022
The UK’s Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) reactor design program has recently taken the decision to use exclusively microwave-based heating and current drive (HCD) actuators for its reactor concepts. This is based on a detailed assessment considering all viable HCD concepts, covering the grid to plasma efficiency (), physics applica…
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UKAEA-CCFE-CP(23)472022
A comprehensive L-H power threshold study of MAST data is presented, with a detailed categorisation of transition and intermediate behaviour and a comparison of the results to scaling laws. Preliminary studies into the ion and electron heat flux for transitions at different densities are introduced. The first results of an L-H transition study o…
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UKAEA-STEP-CP(23)052022
The UK’s Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) reactor design program is now exclusively investigating concepts using microwave-based heating and current drive (HCD) systems. Electron Bernstein Wave (EBW) HCD is a relatively immature technology compared to Electron Cyclotron (EC) HCD but is of interest due to the promise of high current…
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UKAEA-CCFE-PR(22)862022
Doppler reflectometry, or the Doppler backscattering (DBS) diagnostic, enables the measurement of turbulent density fluctuations of intermediate length scales, typically $10 gtrsim k_perp rho_i gtrsim 1$; here $k_perp$ is the turbulence’s wavenumber and $rho_i$ is the ion gyroradius. The backscattered power is proportional to the power of the tur…
Showing 1 - 10 of 18 UKAEA Paper Results