Proof‐of‐principle test for Elmo Bumpy Torus

We don’t know whether he named it after St. Elmo’s fire, or after his clever Uncle Elmo. Ray Dandl, who guided the evolution of the Elmo Bumpy Torus over the last two decades at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, won’t tell. The Elmo Bumpy Torus is something of a hybrid between toroidal and mirror fusion‐reactor designs. Last October, a Department‐of‐Energy Concept Review Committee chose the EBT concept from among nine magnetic‐confinement alternatives to tokamaks and mirrors, to be supported for a proof‐of‐principle test. Early this year the DOE Office of Energy Research concurred in the choice of the Elmo Bumpy Torus, and Oak Ridge is at present conducting a design competition among four industrial consortia for an EBT proof‐of‐principle facility, which is expected to be ready for experiments in about 1984. Aside from the Oak Ridge machine, the only other such bumpy torus currently in operation is in Japan.

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