Tahi: Demonstrating the confinement scaling for commercial dipole fusion

Levitated dipole reactors will benefit from the naturally stable, steady-state, disruption-free, and turbulence-robust plasmas experimentally demonstrated by previous experiments (LDX, RT-1, Junior). OpenStar Technologies is developing the levitated dipole concept for fusion energy production. Having successfully constructed and operated a prototype device, Junior, the next generation device, Tahi, is designed to achieve dense, hot thermal ion populations to validate the performance of levitated dipoles in a fusion relevant regime ($T_i>1 keV$, $n_e>10^{20} m^{-3}$, with a targeted Lawson criteria of $n_eT_i\tau_E > 10^{19} keV s m^{-3}$). OpenStar's advancements in magnet technology will enable Tahi to reach plasma regimes previously inaccessable with dipole experiments; it will provide the data necessary to refine scaling laws and validate the models used for the design of future dipole fusion devices. Tahi is also positioned to investigate how the edge physics scales with plasma parameters in a dipole, and how this affects fusion performance through generation of transport barriers or an edge pedestal. We will present the conceptual design and progress towards our second-generation dipole, Tahi, currently under development at OpenStar, as well as the mission plan and the required diagnostic set.