The title story of the August 2018 issue of Nature Physics is based on a paper co-authored by personnel of the 3D-PSI group at UW Madison. In the paper by A. Dinklage et al. on “Magnetic Confinement Effects on the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator” an overview is presented on scenario and performance accomplishments during the startup campaign of this brand new stellarator device. Highlights are that a scaling of the energy confinement matching H-mode confinement in tokamaks was seen and record electron and ion temperatures were reached. Also, the first campaign provided clear evidence for small bootstrap currents in W7-X plasmas – a design criterion which is of seminal importance for a stable island divertor solution. PhD students and researchers from the 3D-PSI group were involved in gathering the material presented related to the plasma edge and divertor properties.
The next campaign is presently commencing with the participation of three graduate students, one postdoctoral researcher, one assistant scientist and Prof. Schmitz. In this campaign, higher device performance is expected as the island divertor is now installed and a controlled plasma-material interface will be established.
This work is funded by. the U.S. Department of Energy under grant DE-SC0014210 and by funding of the College of Engineering and the Department of Engineering Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
— News: 08-14-2018