Hybrid magnet for use in fusion reactors

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10332641-B2
Application number	US-201515503453-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jul 24, 2015
Priority date	Aug 18, 2014
Publication date	Jun 25, 2019
Grant date	Jun 25, 2019

Abstract

A toroidal field coil for generating a toroidal magnetic field in a nuclear fusion reactor comprising a toroidal plasma chamber having a central column. The toroidal field coil comprises a portion passing through the central column. The portion passing through the central chamber comprises: ●a low temperature superconductor, LTS, layer (21) formed from LTS; ●a high temperature superconductor, HTS, layer (22) formed from HTS and located radially outward of the LTS layer. ●a non-superconducting conductive layer (23) formed from electrically conducting, non-superconducting material and located radially outward of the HTS and LTS layers.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A toroidal field coil for generating a toroidal magnetic field in a nuclear fusion reactor comprising a toroidal plasma chamber having a central column, the toroidal field coil comprising a portion which comprises:
a low temperature superconductor (LTS) layer formed from LTS material;
a high temperature superconductor (HTS) layer formed from HTS material and located radially outward of the LTS layer;
a non-superconducting conductive layer formed from electrically conducting, non-superconducting material and located radially outward of the HTS and LTS layers.

2. A toroidal field coil according to claim 1 , and comprising an insulating layer located between the HTS layer and the non-superconducting conductive layer.

3. A toroidal field coil according to claim 2 , and comprising a further insulating layer located between the LTS layer and the HTS layer.

4. A toroidal field coil according to claim 1 , and comprising a plurality of HTS layers and/or a plurality of LTS layers, each HTS and/or LTS layer being made from a different material, wherein every HTS layer is located radially outwards of every LTS layer, and the non-superconducting conductive layer is located radially outwards of all HTS and LTS layers.

5. A toroidal field coil according to claim 4 , and comprising further insulating layers located between each pair of adjacent HTS and/or LTS layers.

6. A toroidal field coil according to claim 1 , wherein the insulating layer(s) comprises a region of vacuum.

7. A toroidal field coil according to claim 1 , wherein the non-superconducting conductive material comprises copper, beryllium and/or aluminium.

8. A nuclear fusion reactor comprising a plasma chamber having a central column and the toroidal field coil of claim 1 , wherein the portion of the toroidal field coil passes through said central column.

9. The fusion reactor of claim 8 , comprising four or more toroidal field coils.

10. The fusion reactor of claim 8 , configured to confine plasma in the plasma chamber with a major radius of the confined plasma of 1.5 m, preferably less than 1.0 m, more preferably less than 0.5 m.

11. The fusion reactor of claim 8 , which reactor has an aspect ratio of 2.5 or less and is preferably a spherical tokamak reactor with aspect ratio of 2.0 or less.

12. The fusion reactor of claim 8 , in which shielding is provided around the central column in order to reduce or eliminate damage from neutrons.

Assignees

• Tokamak Energy Ltd

Inventors

• Kingham David
• Gryaznevich Mikhail

Classifications

• H05H1/16

  using externally-applied electric and magnetic fields · CPC title

• H05H1/12

  wherein the containment vessel forms a closed or nearly closed loop {(G21B1/05 takes precedence)} · CPC title

• Y02E30/126

  Cross-Sectional Technologies · mapped topic

• G21B1/17

  Vacuum chambers; Vacuum systems · CPC title

• Y02E30/122

  Cross-Sectional Technologies · mapped topic