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Researchers from General Atomics and the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have made a major breakthrough in understanding how potentially damaging heat bursts inside a fusion reactor can be controlled. Scientists performed the experiments on the DIII-D National Fusion Facility, a tokamak operated by General Atomics in San Diego. The findings represent a key step in predicting how to control heat bursts in future fusion facilities including ITER, an international experiment under construction in France to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion energy. This work is supported by the DOE Office of Science (Fusion Energy Sciences).
The studies build upon previous work pioneered on DIII-D showing that these intense heat bursts -- called "ELMs" for short -- could be suppressed with tiny magnetic fields. These tiny fields cause the edge of the plasma to smoothly release heat, thereby avoiding the damaging heat bursts. But until now, scientists did not understand how these fields worked. "Many mysteries surrounded how the plasma distorts to suppress these heat bursts," said Carlos Paz-Soldan, a General Atomics scientist and lead author of the first of the two papers that report the seminal findings back-to-back in the same issue of Physical Review Letters this week.
The team believe they have found a new way of squeezing atoms together so they fuse and generate energy, in a small-scale magnetic device.
As a result, they aim to build a reactor a 10th the size of current approaches.
They argue that their device, which would fit on the back of a truck, could produce 100 megawatts (MW) of power and use just 25kg of fuel in a year.
originally posted by: OccamsRazor04
Lockheed has already achieved this I believe. It's possible their research has been shared, or that this team independently found a solution. They too use magnetic fields.
The team believe they have found a new way of squeezing atoms together so they fuse and generate energy, in a small-scale magnetic device.
As a result, they aim to build a reactor a 10th the size of current approaches.
They argue that their device, which would fit on the back of a truck, could produce 100 megawatts (MW) of power and use just 25kg of fuel in a year.
www.bbc.com...
originally posted by: OccamsRazor04
Lockheed has already achieved this I believe. It's possible their research has been shared, or that this team independently found a solution. They too use magnetic fields.
The team believe they have found a new way of squeezing atoms together so they fuse and generate energy, in a small-scale magnetic device.
As a result, they aim to build a reactor a 10th the size of current approaches.
They argue that their device, which would fit on the back of a truck, could produce 100 megawatts (MW) of power and use just 25kg of fuel in a year.
www.bbc.com...
originally posted by: Uphill
a reply to: Maxmars
Like nuclear fission, fusion also releases ionizing radiation into the environment 24/7. It's not as much radiation, true, but it's happening.