START-UP AND HEATING OF RFP REACTORS AND LARGE EXPERIMENTS

Ohmic heating to ignition in an RFP is a very attractive feature from a technological point of view. Heating and energy loss mechanisms are discussed and the heating and ignition phases of an RFP reactor are studied with a time dependent O-D model. The performance of a large device, RFX, is studied on the basis of the specified design figures. The study of the current rise time and flat top phases indicates that short rise time are not necessary but the possibility to sustain the current flat top for 120 ms with the available volt-seconds is marginal when realistic loss processes are considered.