Plasma Heating Control in Tokamaks

Nuclear fusion, as the name implies, is based on fusing hydrogen atoms to form helium; a process that releases tremendous amounts of energy. Part of the problem is to balance the energy equation. Getting hydrogen to fuse is one thing. Getting it to do so while producing more energy than you pump into the reactor to run it is another. Even if you manage that, you still need to generate that energy at a low enough cost to compete with conventional sources. In this book the methods of plasma heating such as Ohmic heating, RF heating and Neutral-beam injection heating are described in the control point of view. The issue is studied in the JET, FTU and ITER Tokamaks including Spheromak and Dynomak.