The effects of losses of the fast electron current carriers are included in a calculation of the efficiency of RF current drive. The analytical expressions obtained for the current drive efficiency J/P A and bulk heating rate P D /P A are explicitly dependent on the fast electron confinement time, T F . In most present tokamak experiments, fast particle losses are predicted to reduce the current drive efficiency from 50% to more than an order of magnitude. However, in future fusion plasmas fast electron confinement appears to be sufficient to allow nearly ideal efficiencies to be achieved.
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S. Luckhardt (1987) studied this question.