Boundary physics experiments in tokamaks

聚变能源研究的目标是利用为太阳和恒星提供动力的相同过程。研究是在除加拿大以外的所有八国集团国家的大型政府实验室进行的。申请者通过与许多这样的实验室的研究人员合作来进行他的研究，产生由他自己、他的研究生和多伦多大学的研究助理承担的项目。OEDGE是由申请人和他的多伦多小组开发的大型计算机代码，用于对磁约束聚变装置(例如托卡马克)边缘处的热等离子体的行为进行解释性建模，其中等离子体与固体结构(墙盔甲)发生相互作用。OEDGE现在被欧洲和美国的一些主要聚变实验室使用。聚变研究进入了一个新阶段，2005年6月决定将耗资100亿美元的ITER托卡马克项目设在法国。ITER正在由一个由工业国家组成的国际财团建造，以证明聚变能源的科学可行性。ITER将“燃烧”氚，这是一种在自然界中只有少量存在的物质。加拿大的CANDU裂变反应堆以每年几公斤的速度产生不受欢迎的副产品氚，使加拿大成为世界上商业氚的主要来源。热核实验堆的运作计划是基于加拿大的氚供应情况。未来几十年，热核实验堆将需要加拿大的大部分产量，超过10公斤，价值1000-1亿美元/公斤。当当前一代的碳装甲聚变装置用氚操作时，发现引入机器的大约一半的氚以碳共沉积的形式保留在容器中，不能轻易回收。对热核实验堆的外推表明，在几天的运行后，1公斤的氚可以用这种方式捆绑在一起。由于热核实验堆允许的船内氚库存只有0.35公斤，这是一个严重的问题。为了解决氚保留问题，拟议的研究将涉及申请者小组在美国DIII-D托卡马克上提出、设计和进行实验，并用我们的OEDGE代码解释这些实验。

Fusion energy research aims to harness the same process that powers the sun and stars. Research is carried out in large governments labs in all G8 nations except Canada. The Applicant carries out his research by collaborating with researchers in a number of these labs, generating projects to be undertaken by himself, his graduate students and research associates at the University of Toronto. OEDGE is a large computer code developed by the Applicant and his Toronto group for interpretive modeling of the behaviour of the hot plasma at the edge of the magnetic confinement fusion devices such as tokamaks, where plasma interaction with the solid structure ('wall armour') occurs. OEDGE is now used by a number of the major fusion labs in Europe and the US. Fusion research has entered a new phase with the decision in June 2005 to site the $10 billion ITER tokamak project in France. ITER is being built by an international consortium of industrial nations to demonstrate the scientific feasibility of fusion energy. ITER will 'burn' tritium, a substance which occurs only in small quantities in nature. Canada's CANDU fission reactors produce tritium as an unwanted by-product at the rate of a few kg/year, making Canada the main source of commercial tritium in the world. ITER's operational plans are based on the availability of Canadian tritium. ITER will require most of Canada's production over the next several decades, more than 10 kg, worth $10-100 million/kg. When the present generation of carbon-armoured fusion devices was operated with tritium, it was found that about half of the tritium introduced into the machine was retained in the vessel in carbon co-deposits and could not be readily recovered. Extrapolation to ITER indicates that 1 kg of tritium could be tied up in this way after a few day's operation. Since the permitted in-vessel tritium inventory in ITER is only 0.35 kg this poses a serious problem. With the aim of solving this tritium retention problem, the proposed research will involve the Applicant's group proposing, designing and carrying out experiments in the DIII-D tokamak in the US, also interpreting them with our OEDGE code.