Old news, but I just ran across it and was hoping someone here could clear things up for me.
1) What is MAST? Just a mini-tokamak?
2) Does anyone here think it has any potential?
http://www.fusion.org.uk/mast/index.html
What is MAST and how is it different from ITER?
http://www.fusion.org.uk/techdocs/iaea98as.pdf is a good summary paper.
The difference is the aspect ratio. A tighter aspect ration was predicted to give higher beta for lower toroidal current, but in the early days folks didn't think it was possible to engineer anything tighter than tokamaks like JET. The START programme, built from left-over bits for <GBP100,000, showed good results and that prompted the MAST build. But it turns out that these spherical tokamaks have their own instability issues to get over.
So the difference is - aspect ratio, but otherwise much the same.
The difference is the aspect ratio. A tighter aspect ration was predicted to give higher beta for lower toroidal current, but in the early days folks didn't think it was possible to engineer anything tighter than tokamaks like JET. The START programme, built from left-over bits for <GBP100,000, showed good results and that prompted the MAST build. But it turns out that these spherical tokamaks have their own instability issues to get over.
So the difference is - aspect ratio, but otherwise much the same.