System development status of Formosa Integrated Research Spherical Tokamak (FIRST), the first Tokamak in Taiwan

Po-Yu Chang^1*, Jean Nelson¹, Yung-Wei Pi¹, Chun-Yi Chen³, Jie-Ling Liou², Keng-Yu Lin⁴

¹Instutute of Space and Plasma Sciences, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan city, Taiwan
²Department of Photonics, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan city, Taiwan
³International Degree Program on Energy Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan city, Taiwan
⁴Department or Physics, National Chung Kung University, Tainan city, Taiwan

* Presenter:Po-Yu Chang, email:pchang@mail.ncku.edu.tw

Formosa Integrated Research Spherical Tokamak (FIRST), the first Tokamak in Taiwan, is being designed. It will be a spherical Tokamak with a major and minor radius of 45 cm and 32 cm, respectively. The elongation and the triangularity will be 2.4 and 0.5, respectively. The designed toroidal field and the planned plasma current are up to 0.5 T and 100 kA, respectively. The goal of the plasma temperature is at least 100 eV in the beginning phase. We are focusing on developing the hardware of the spherical Tokamak in this presentation, e.g., the physical design of the chamber and coils, the current drivers that drive all coils, the magnetic field diagnostics using 3-axis B-dot probes, the flux loops, etc. To design the required current profiles for different coils, eddy currents flowing in the chamber wall induced by time-varying magnetic fields from coils were considered. Then, the current profiles are provided by supercapacitors with H-bridge configurations. On the other hand, 3-axis B-dot probes and flux loops provide information of the magnetic field. Designs and the testing results will be given.

Keywords: Tokamak, Spherical tokamak, FIRST, Nuclear fusion, Magnetic confinement fusion