Progress and Challenges in TAE’s Quest Towards a Practical FRC-Based Fusion Reactor

Institutskolloquium

  • Datum: 05.03.2021
  • Uhrzeit: 16:00 - 17:30
  • Vortragender: Dr. Erik H. Trask
  • Erik H. Trask leads the Experimental Section in the Fusion Division at TAE Technologies, Inc. He is a graduate of UC Irvine, having received his doctorate in 2010 for studies of fluctuation-induced transport on the Irvine Field-Reversed Configuration (FRC). He has studied in the P-24 group at Los Alamos National Laboratory and been a member of the American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics (DPP) since 2003. He has been a frequent presenter of DPP meetings, and has served as session chair. As part of FESAC and associated subcommittee, he worked to produce the recent Long Range Strategic Planning report for the Department of Energy FES division. At TAE, Dr. Trask managed a cryogenic hydrogen pellet fueling system, developed RF sniffer probes, served as chief operator and has been a frequent experimental Session Leader on the C-2W device at TAE. He was instrumental in the development of a shot scheduler system where batches of complete experimental machine settings are prepared prior to run days allowing efficient queueing of experiments. He participated in development of and coauthored a paper on machine optimization techniques in collaboration with Google. He has twice won the award for yearly achievement, once for leadership in joint research with Google and once for assisting with the design and construction of the ~100GW pulsed power system on C-2W. Current responsibilities include managing operational activities, ensuring data analysis and processing pipelines are running well, and designing and scheduling experiments. His research interests include development of plasma models, studies of wave heating schemes in over-dense plasma, implementing efficient search techniques in high dimensions, and high power rotating magnetic field plasma sources.
  • Ort: Zoom Meeting Room 1
  • Gastgeber: Dmitry Moseev
  • Kontakt: dmitry.moseev@ipp.mpg.de
Progress and Challenges in TAE’s Quest Towards a Practical FRC-Based Fusion Reactor

Work at TAE Technologies has advanced the beam-driven advanced FRC topology due to breakthroughs in temperature, current drive, and boundary control. Steady-state discharges at keV temperatures and high beta have been enabled by a fast cycle of learning, with rapid hardware iterations and optimal search algorithms. This presentation will provide a brief overview of the conceptual components, cover key experimental accomplishments, and conclude with a discussion of transport. Discussion of machine capabilities and the diagnostic suite will be highlighted as well.

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