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Brand, H.

Publications and source records attributed to Brand, H..

6 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

Demonstration of reduced neoclassical energy transport in Wendelstein 7-X

Research on magnetic confinement of high-temperature plasmas has the ultimate goal of harnessing nuclear fusion for the production of electricity. Although the tokamak is the leading toroidal magnetic-confinement concept, it is not without shortcomings and the fusion community has therefore also pursued alternative concepts such as the stellarator. Unlike axisymmetric tokamaks, stellarators possess a three-dimensional (3D) magnetic field geometry. The availability of this additional dimension opens up an extensive configuration space for computational optimization of both the field geometry itself and the current-carrying coils that produce it. Such an optimization was undertaken in designing Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X), a large helical-axis advanced stellarator (HELIAS), which began operation in 2015 at Greifswald, Germany. A major drawback of 3D magnetic field geometry, however, is that it introduces a strong temperature dependence into the stellarator’s non-turbulent ‘neoclassical’ energy transport. Indeed, such energy losses will become prohibitive in high-temperature reactor plasmas unless a strong reduction of the geometrical factor associated with this transport can be achieved; such a reduction was therefore a principal goal of the design of W7-X. In spite of the modest heating power currently available, W7-X has already been able to achieve high-temperature plasma conditions during its 2017 and 2018 experimental campaigns, producing record values of the fusion triple product for such stellarator plasmas. The triple product of plasma density, ion temperature and energy confinement time is used in fusion research as a figure of merit, as it must attain a certain threshold value before net-energy-producing operation of a reactor becomes possible. Here we demonstrate that such record values provide evidence for reduced neoclassical energy transport in W7-X, as the plasma profiles that produced these results could not have been obtained in stellarators lacking a comparably high level of neoclassical optimization.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Search for elements 119 and 120

In this work, a search for production of the superheavy elements with atomic numbers 119 and 120 was performed in the 50 Ti + 249 Bk and 50 Ti + 249 Cf fusion-evaporation reactions, respectively, at the gas-filled recoil separator TASCA at GSI Darmstadt, Germany. Over four months of irradiation, the 249 Bk target partially decayed into 249 Cf, which allowed for a simultaneous search for both elements. Neither was detected at cross-section sensitivity levels of 65 and 200 fb for the 50 Ti + 249 Bk and 50 Ti + 249 Cf reactions, respectively, at a midtarget beam energy of E lab = 281.5 MeV. The nonobservation of elements 119 and 120 is discussed within the concept of fusion-evaporation reactions including various theoretical predictions on the fission-barrier heights of superheavy nuclei in the region of the island of stability.

38 RADIATION CHEMISTRY, RADIOCHEMISTRY, AND NUCLEA↗