Suppression of plasma instabilities in space and ground nuclear power devices

TL;DR

This paper investigates plasma oscillations in stabilizers for nuclear power devices and proposes a method to suppress instabilities by controlling plasma conductivity through external electron concentration adjustments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to suppress plasma instabilities by controlling plasma conductivity via external electron concentration, enhancing stability in nuclear power device stabilizers.

Findings

Oscillations caused by negative plasma conductivity were experimentally confirmed.

The proposed control method achieved high stability at 5 A/cm2 current density.

Stability was maintained at 500 W/cm2 power level.

Abstract

The conditions for the excitation of current and voltage oscillations in the plasma of a three-electrode current and voltage stabilizer are experimentally investigated. It was found that in the regimes under consideration, the plasma has negative conductivity, which causes oscillations. A highly efficient method for suppressing plasma instabilities is proposed, based on controlling the sign of differential plasma conductivity by adjusting the concentration of slow electrons using an external electrode. The proposed method makes it possible to achieve a high level of stability of the energy characteristics of the stabilizer at a discharge current density of up to 5 A/cm2 and a power of 500 W/cm2.