Spheromak comparison with

A fairly complete first order reactor design has been done for the field-reversed configuration both for the TRACT and the moving-ring system CTOR, but it is very low level in comparison with the tokamak reactor designs. I am not so familiar with the spheromak reactor designs. I don t know whether anyone else can comment on them. This is all I have to say about those two configurations. It is perhaps time to open up for comments. 

We discuss (1) the theoretical analysis of the spheromak, (recent theoretical studies are summarized and a comparison is made with other approaches), and (2) a spheromak plasma formation scheme. One of the difficult aspects of spheromak research is to produce a toroidal plasma in the absence of coils down the axis of rotational symmetry. A novel plasma formation scheme has been developed at PPPL to create a toroidal plasma by using a flux generating core technique. This formation scheme has been optimized with the assistance of resistive MHD computer codes. The parameters of the S-1 device, now under construction, were determined with various theoretical aids. 

The term spheromak is widely used to distinguish the family of equilibria with zero external toroidal field from other compact tori. For example, the "classical" spheromak shown in Fig 1 is the "aspect-ratio-unity limit," and the stabilized diffuse pinch [14] (operation of diffuse pinch with zero external toroidal field) corresponds to the large aspect-ratio limit. Before we discuss the spheromak in detail, it may be instructive to briefly survey the relation between the spheromak and other approaches. A comparison is made in table 1. The field is the poloidal field strength at the plasma edge, is the toroidal field strength at the magnetic... 

Fig. 2 Comparison of classical spheromak configuration (solid line) with Hill s vortex configuration (dotted line).

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