Tri Alpha Energy's experimental program has demonstrated reliable field-reversed configuration (FRC) formation and sustainment, driven by fast ions via high-power neutral-beam (NB) injection. The world's largest compact-toroid device, C-2U, was upgraded from C-2 with the following key system upgrades: increased total NB input power from ~4 MW (20 keV hydrogen) to 10+ MW (15 keV hydrogen) with tilted injection angle; enhanced edge-biasing capability inside of each end divertor for boundary/stability control. C-2U experiments with those upgraded systems have successfully demonstrated dramatic improvements in FRC performance and achieved sustainment of advanced beam-driven FRCs with a macroscopically stable and hot plasma state for up to 5+ ms. Plasma diamagnetism in the best discharges has reached record lifetimes of over 11 ms, timescales twice as long as C-2. The C-2U plasma performance, including the sustainment feature, has a strong correlation with NB pulse duration, with the diamagnetism persisting even several milliseconds after NB termination due to the accumulated fast-ion population by NB injection. Power balance analysis shows substantial improvements in equilibrium and transport parameters, whereby electron energy confinement time strongly correlates with electron temperature; i.e. the confinement time in C-2U scales strongly with a positive power of Te.
Neutralized, intense-ion beams for fusion