SCR-1: Design and Construction of a Small Modular Stellarator for Magnetic Confinement of Plasma

This paper describes briefly the design and construction of a small modular stellarator for magnetic confinement of plasma, called Stellarator of Costa Rica 1, or SCR-1; developed by the Plasma Physics Group of the Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica, PlasmaTEC. The SCR-1 is based on the small Spanish stellarator UST_1, created by the engineer Vicente Queral.

The SCR-1 will employ stainless steel torus-shaped vacuum vessel with a major radius of 460.33 mm and a cross section radius of 110.25mm. A typical SCR-1 plasma will have an average radius 42.2 mm and a volume of 8 liters (0.01 m³), and an aspect ratio of 5.7.

The magnetic resonant field will be 0.0878 T, and a period of 2 (m=2) with a rotational transform of 0.3. The magnetic field will be provided by 12 modular coils, with 8 turns each, with an electrical current of 8704 A per coil (1088 A per turn of each coil). This current will be fed by a bank of cell batteries. The plasma will be heated by ECRH with magnetrons of a total power of 5kW, in the first harmonic at 2.45GHz. The expected electron temperature and density are 15 eV and 10¹⁷ m^-3 respectively with an estimated confinement time of 7.30 x 10^-4 ms. The initial diagnostics on the SCR-1 will consist of a Langmuir probe, a heterodyne microwave interferometer, and a field mapping system.

The first plasma of the SCR-1 is expected at the end of 2011.