The spherical tokamak programme at Culham

The Spherical Tokamak (ST) is the low aspect ratio limit of the conventional tokamak, and appears to offer attractive physics properties in a simpler device.The START (Small Tight Aspect Ratio Tokamak) experiment provided the world's first demonstration of the properties of hot plasmas in an ST configuration, and was operational at Culham from January 1991 to March 1998, obtaining plasma current of up to 300kA and pulse durations of ~ 50ms.Its successor, MAST is scheduled to obtain first plasma in Autumn 1998 and is a purpose built, high vacuum machine designed to have a tenfold increase in plasma volume with plasma currents up to 2MA.Current drive and heating will be by a combination of induction-compression as on START, a high-performance central solenoid, 1.5MW ECRH and 5MW of Neutral Beam Injection.The promising results from START are reviewed, and the many challenges posed for the next generation of purpose-built STs (such as MAST) are described.