Confinement of Fusion Reaction Products during the Fishbone Instability

Abstract
The presence of fishbone events in the PDX tokamak is correlated with a reduction in the burnup of 0.8-MeV He3 ions. This reduction is probably caused by distortion of the He3 drift orbits in the helical magnetic fields associated with the instability, resulting in the loss of about 70% of the confined He3 ions in a moderately strong fishbone. Such a nonresonant loss of particles with large orbits indicates that fishbone events may influence 3.5-MeV alphas in ignition experiments.