Plasma current start-up experiments without a central solenoid in the iron core STOR-M tokamak

Reproducible plasma current start-up without a central solenoid (CS) has been demonstrated using the outer ohmic heating (OH) coils in the iron core STOR-M tokamak (Mitarai et al 2014 Fusion Eng. Des.89 2467–71). Although the outer OH coil current saturates the iron core eventually, it has been demonstrated that the plasma current can be maintained during the iron core saturation phase. In this work, further studies have been conducted to investigate the effects of the turn number of the outer OH coils (N = 4 or N = 6) in the CS-less discharges and to evaluate the plasma stability with respect to the n-decay index of the vertical magnetic field. For the loose coupling of the iron core with N = 4 turns, the plasma current can be sustained after the additional third capacitor bank is applied near the iron core saturation phase, showing the slow transition from the unsaturated to the partially saturated phase. For the case of stronger coupling of N = 6 turns, the plasma current is increased at the same fast bank voltage, but the main discharge is shortened from 35 to 20 ms. As the magnetizing current is smaller due to stronger coupling between the OH coils and the plasma current, the transition from the unsaturated to the saturated phase is slightly difficult at present. The present experimental results suggest a feasible operation scenario in a future spherical tokamak (ST) at least using loose iron core coupling for smoother transition from the unsaturated to the saturated iron core phase. Thus, a reliable plasma current start-up by the outer OH coils and the current ramp-up to a steady state by additional heating power and vertical field coils could be considered as an operation scenario for future ST reactors with an iron core transformer.