Book description
This revised and enlarged second edition of the popular textbook and
reference contains comprehensive treatments of both the established
foundations of magnetic fusion plasma physics and of the newly
developing areas of active research. It concludes with a look ahead to
fusion power reactors of the future. The well-established topics of
fusion plasma physics -- basic plasma phenomena, Coulomb scattering,
drifts of charged particles in magnetic and electric fields, plasma
confinement by magnetic fields, kinetic and fluid collective plasma
theories, plasma equilibria and flux surface geometry, plasma waves and
instabilities, classical and neoclassical transport, plasma-materials
interactions, radiation, etc. -- are fully developed from first
principles through to the computational models employed in modern plasma
physics.
The new and emerging topics of fusion plasma physics research --
fluctuation-driven plasma transport and gyrokinetic/gyrofluid
computational methodology, the physics of the divertor, neutral atom
recycling and transport, impurity ion transport, the physics of the
plasma edge (diffusive and non-diffusive transport, MARFEs, ELMs, the
L-H transition, thermal-radiative instabilities, shear suppression of
transport, velocity spin-up), etc. -- are comprehensively developed and
related to the experimental evidence. Operational limits on the
performance of future fusion reactors are developed from plasma physics
and engineering constraints, and conceptual designs of future fusion
power reactors are discussed.
Professor Stacey received his PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1966. He then worked in naval
reactor design at Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory and led the fast
reactor theory and computations and the fusion research programs at
Argonne National Laboratory. In 1977, he became Callaway Professor of
Nuclear Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he has
been teaching and performing research in reactor physics and plasma
physics. He is the author of six books and about 250 research papers. He
led the international INTOR Workshop which defined the design features
and R&D needs for the first fusion experimental reactor, for which
he received the US Dept. of Energy Distinguished Associate Award.
Professor Stacey is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society and of the
American Physical Society and is the recipient of, among other awards,
the Seaborg Award for Nuclear Research and the Wigner Reactor Physics
Award from the American Nuclear Society.
