The Role of Controls in Nuclear Fusion
E. Schuster and M. Ariola
IEEE Conference on Decision and Control
San Diego, California, December 13-15, 2006
Abstract
|
|
The need for new sources of energy is expected
to become a critical problem within the next few decades.
Although controlled fusion is a very challenging technology,
a fusion power reactor would offer significant advantages over
existing energy sources, including no air pollution or greenhouse
gases, no risk of nuclear accident, no generation of material
for nuclear weapons, low-level radioactive waste, and a worldwide
available, nearly infinite supply of fuel, which would thus
eliminate international tensions caused by imbalance in fuel
supply. Tokamaks, which are the major and most promising
magnetic confinement approach to fusion being pursued around
the world, are high order, nonlinear systems with a large
number of instabilities, so there are many extremely challenging
mathematical modeling and control problems, which must be
solved before a fusion power system becomes a viable entity.
In this paper, we introduce briefly the basis of magnetic
confinement fusion devices, and describe some of the many
challenging tokamak plasma control problems, linking them
with other papers presented within the special session on
ìControl of Fusion Plasmas in Tokamaksî at this conference.