Workshop on Burning Plasma Science
Exploring the Fusion Science Frontier
Purpose and Scope: The workshop is being organized by the UFA to be one of the primary sources of community input to the assessments of burning plasma science being carried out in the next year by FESAC and the Virtual Laboratory for Technology Next Step Options Advisory Committee. The emphasis of the workshop will be on burning plasma science issues in tokamak configurations, but discussion of burning plasma issues as they relate to other fusion concepts and more broadly to scientific areas outside of fusion energy will be strongly encouraged. Building on the progress made in discussing these issues at Snowmass 1999 as summarized in the report of the Burning Plasma Physics Working Group [ http://www.ap.columbia.edu/Smproceedings or http://plasma.ep.wisc.edu/UFA/Download.html ], the key questions which speakers and discussion leaders are asked to address are:

  1. What are the compelling scientific issues which could be addressed by a burning plasma experimental facility?
  2. Identify those burning plasma scientific issues which are inaccessible for study in existing or near-term non-burning plasma experiments.
  3. What is the present physics basis and confidence level in achieving burning plasma conditions? In particular, how have recent developments in theory and experiment affected our confidence in achieving burning plasma conditions?
  4. How comprehensively can these burning plasma science issues be addressed establishing a firm basis for extrapolation in scale and magnetic configuration?
  5. Are there compelling scientific issues outside of fusion energy which can be addressed by a burning plasma experimental facility?

The workshop will be organized to provide time for in-depth discussion of proposed answers to these questions. A report summarizing the range of views and degree of consensus reached will be prepared.