HTML: nick@tokamak.info
| Return to home page for tokamak.info |
Tokamak World Records |
2016 saw a collection of new world records claimed by EAST, KSTAR and Alcator C-Mod. The exact claims from East and KSTAR were a little difficult to fathom, but I have tried to summarise what they have claimed (to the best of my knowledge. Feel free to suggest how it might be reworded for full clarity. Here is a useful page courtesy of FuseNet which gives some more detail: Shattering fusion records during the last months of 2016
This page is not primarily intended for the non-technical audience! Nor is it likely to be complete or undisputed. World records include:
| Record | Perhaps held by . . . |
| Highest toroidal field | Alcator C-MOD, USA |
| Smallest conventional tokamak to demonstrate all the characteristics of H-mode | (Probably) COMPASS-D, UK This record might be considered controversial. Which characteristics count?. Note that START achieved H-mode, but is a spherical tokamak. Also note that the Canadian T de V is the smallest machine to have contributed H-modes to the International Multi-Tokamak Database and that this has significantly affected extrapolations to ITER size machines. Machines as small as STOR-M have also demonstrated some of the features of H-mode, but perhaps not all of them. |
| Largest major radius (5m) | ET, USA |
| Greatest increase in pulse duration by using AC operation (35 ms to 220 ms) | ISTTOK, Portugal |
| Greatest fusion power output (16.1 MW) | JET, EU (in divertor configuration) |
| Greatest fusion energy yield (59 MJ in a 5 seond pulse, 2021) | JET, EU (in divertor configuration) |
| Largest plasma volume | JET, EU in its original limiter configuration |
| Highest plasma current (7 MA) | JET, EU in limiter configuration |
| Largest DC flywheel generator | JFT-2M, Japan |
| Record NBI power injection | JT-60U, Japan |
| Highest Ion Temperature (5.2 x 108°C) | JT-60U, Japan |
| Highest fusion triple product | JT-60U, Japan |
| Longest confinement time | JT-60U, Japan |
| Highest plasma pressure, 2 bar | Alcator C-Mod, USA (2016) |
| Highest proportion of boot-strap current (100% achieved in 2006) | TCV, Switzerland |
| First fully non-plasma current driven by ECCD alone (210kA in 2000) | TCV, Switzerland |
| Most desirable second-hand tokamak (?) (Iran offered $90 million!) | T de V, Canada |
| Longest pulse duration at over 100kA plasma current (5 hours 16 minutes) | TRIAM-1M, Japan |
| Claimed longest pulse duration (29 hours) - it turns out that there is some dispute about whether this was truly a tokamak plasma or more-or-less a glow discharge. There have been claims that the plasma current was not measured. It is hard to say that it truly beats the performance of TRIAM-1M in a way that is yet useful. | ST25HTS, UK |
| Longest pulse duration at 'high temperature' (1056 seconds reaching 127 million degrees fahrenheit in 2021) | EAST, China |
| Longest H-mode - EAST and KSTAR continue to compete strongly for this record. In 2017 KSTAR claimed 70 seconds, and shortly afterwards EAST claimed a stable 101.2-second steady-state high confinement plasma. This record seems likely not to last for long. | Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-07-china-artificial-sun-world-steady-state.html#jCp.EAST, China (2016) KSTAR, S Korea (later 2016) |
| Highest injected/extracted energy (1.1GJ in a pulse) | Tore Supra, France |
| Highest beta achieved in a tokamak (Approaching 100%) | PEGASUS, USA |
| Largest number of TF coils (56 coils) | Ormak, USA |
| Smallest number of TF coils (4 coils?) | Alcator A, USA |
| Largest tokamak under construction | ITER |
If you would like to suggest another world record to add to this table, please contact me with evidence to support your claim.
|
|
|
HTML: nick@tokamak.info |