Energetic-Particle-Driven Instabilities in General Toroidal Configurations

Energetic-particle driven instabilities have been extensively observed in both tokamaks and stellarators. In order for such devices to ultimately succeed as D-T fusion reactors, the super-Alfvenic 3.5 Mev fusion-produced alpha particles must be sufficiently well confined. This requires the evaluation of losses from classical collisional transport processes as well as from energetic particle-driven instabilities. An important group of instabilities in this context are the discrete shear Alfven modes, which can readily be destabilized by energetic particles (with velocities of the order of vAlfven) through wave-particle resonances. While these modes in three-dimensional systems have many similarities to those in tokamaks, the detailed implementation of modeling tools has required development of new methods. Recent efforts in this direction will be described here, with an emphasis on reduced models (© 2010 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)