Burning plasma simulation of TR-1 tokamak and HR-1 helical reactors

For comparative assessment of tokamak and helical reactors, two base case reactor designs with 1 GW electric power output are introduced; high-field high-beta compact tokamak reactor TR-1 (major radius R = 5.2 m, magnetic field B = 7.1 T) and high-beta helical system HR-1 (R = 12.1 m, B = 4.6 T). Operational boundaries of both reactors are compared by the zero-dimensional energy balance model, which clarifies the difference between the higher temperature operational regime of TR-1 and the lower temperature regime of HR-1. These operational scenarios are reconfirmed by the toroidal transport analysis linkage (TOTAL) code coupling with two-dimensional equilibrium in the TOTAL-T tokamak code and three-dimensional equilibrium in the TOTAL-H helical code. The beta effect on confinement degradation and the impurity radiation effect on energy balance are found to make the ignition difficult in both systems.