The Stellarator of Costa Rica 1 (or SCR-1) is a small modular

stellarator A stellarator is a plasma device that relies primarily on external magnets to confine a plasma. Scientists researching magnetic confinement fusion aim to use stellarator devices as a vessel for nuclear fusion reactions. The name refers to th ...

for the magnetic confinement of plasma located at

Cartago, Costa Rica Cartago () is the head city of Cartago canton of the Cartago Province, and is composed of the Oriental and Occidental districts as stated in the administrative divisions of Costa Rica. It was the capital of Costa Rica from 1574 to 1824. Histor ...

. It is developed by the plasmaTEC group of the Plasma Laboratory for Fusion Energy and Applications at

Costa Rica Institute of Technology The Costa Rica Institute of Technology (TEC) ( es, Tecnológico de Costa Rica) is a university in Costa Rica specializing in engineering and advanced science and research, modeled as an institute of technology. Its main campus is located in the Du ...

. It began operation as

Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived ...

's first stellarator on 29 June 2016. SCR-1 is of a compact design and has the distinction of having the smallest aspect ratio of any operating stellarator device (>4.4). Its design is influenced by the small Spanish stellarator UST-1.

History

In 2010, SCR-1 was originally proposed to be much bigger in size (major radius of 460.33 mm, plasma radius of 42.2 mm) and scale (aspect ratio of 5.7, magnetic field of 0.0878

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), and was expected to complete in 2011. However, the development of SCR-1 took five years (between 2011 and 2015) to complete.

References

{{Fusion power Fusion power Stellarators