The tokamak concept is presently the most advanced concept for a thermonuclear fusion reactor. In a tokamak a hot plasma is confined in a toroidal configuration by magnetic fields - partly produced by external coils and partly produced by an internal toroidal plasma current. It allows for to produce high enough temperatures in the plasma so that sufficient fusion reaction can take place under controllable conditions. TCV however is too small in size in order to produce a significant number of fusion reactions - it has never been designed to do so. Other tokamaks in the world are generally limited to a more or less fixed shape which is given by the shape of vacuum vessel.
Plasma physicists know that the performance of a fusion reactor depends on the plasma shape.
With TCV, fusion research has a versatile tool to study the influence of shape on confinement and stability. TCV will thus gather important informations for the design of a future Fusion Reactor. For this purpose up to 9 strong microwave sources, called gyrotrons, are being installed representing a power of 4.5MW additional heating for the plasma. The aim of TCV is to extend the plasma parameter limits to easier regimes of operation. Various scenarios of vertically-elongated plasmas will be systematically investigated.