High Power Neutral Beam Systems

Abstract

Spurred by the requirement to supply megawatts of power to heat magnetically confined plasmas to temperatures of interest for fusion research, a new class of low energy, high power accelerators termed neutral beam injectors has been developed. Industry has played an important role in building upon technology advances at the national laboratories to engineer neutral beam injectors to meet the needs of specific users. A brief retrospective of the field is presented, with emphasis upon one particular application, that of DIII-D, a large tokamak at General Atomics. In this instance, the role of industry has been especially extensive because the user/system integrator is itself an industrial concern.