University of California at Berkeley
Magnetic Confinement Fusion -- BCTX Section
Overview
The UCBNE department is home of the Berkeley Compact Toroidal Experiment (BCTX). Operated by Professor Ed Morse, the BCTX is a spheromak experiment
with the unique capability of producing auxiliary-heated spheromaks. The machine has a lower hybrid drive system which can deliver up to 20 MW of RF power at 432 MHz to the plasma for a 100 us pulse length.
Given complete coupling of RF energy into the plasma, this represents sufficient energy to heat the plasma electrons to 1 keV. Experiments at such temperatures offer the opportunity to explore ideal MHD pressure limits and energy confinement regimes not accessible in other devices.
Installed diagnostics on this machine include Thomson scattering for electron temperature, magnetic field B-dot loops, a laser interferometer for density measurement, several spectrometers for impurity ion spectroscopy, and an ion Doppler temperature measurement system. Current experiments are focused on determining electron heat confinement in spheromaks using the RF heating source as a heat pulse. To date, electron temperatures up to 150 eV have been measured in BCTX.
Please contact Professor Ed Morse for more information.
BCTX Information
