A team of fusion researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory used datasets from measurements on the Joint European Torus, or JET, tokamak to model an improved method for quantifying the amount of plasma-radiated power during a disruption of normal operations.
Impurities in the plasmas in tokamaks can reduce performance. These impurities are from interactions between the hot plasma and tungsten tokamak walls. This experiment found that tokamak magnetic fields that rotate clockwise direction can remove these impurities. This is the opposite direction from normal and the same direction the plasma current moves.
RUDN University physicists have described the conditions for the most efficient operation of long mirror-based variant of cyclotron in the autoresonance mode. These data will bring better understanding of plasma processes in magnetic traps.
It has long been theorized that hydrogen, helium, and lithium were the only chemical elements in existence during the Big Bang, and that supernova explosions are responsible for transmuting these elements into heavier ones. Researchers are now challenging this and in AIP Advances propose an alternative model for the formation of nitrogen, oxygen, and water based on the history of Earth's atmosphere. They postulate that the 25 elements with atomic numbers smaller than iron were created via an endothermic nuclear transmutation of two nuclei, carbon and oxygen.
Story tips: Carbon goes to space, cybersecurity put to the test, fusion’s power trip, cost-cutting controls and fungal infusion
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced up to $400 million in funding for a range of research opportunities to support DOE’s clean energy, economic, and national security goals.
Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are conducting research and development to help the ITER tokamak fusion reactor better handle hot plasma.
Emily A. Carter, former dean of the Princeton University School of Engineering and Applied Science, and most recently executive vice chancellor and provost at UCLA, has been named Senior Strategic Advisor for Sustainability Science at PPPL.
Theoretical and computational physicist Greg Hammett, a leader in advancing understanding of the complex turbulence that controls the performance of fusion plasmas and a dedicated educator, has been named a 2021 Distinguished Scientist Fellow by the DOE’s Office of Science.
The Department of Energy (DOE) announced three DOE National Laboratory scientists as DOE Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellows. This honor, authorized by the America COMPETES Act, is bestowed on National Laboratory scientists with outstanding records of achievement and provides each Fellow with $1 million over three years to support activities that develop, sustain, and promote scientific and academic excellence in DOE Office of Science research.
The Compact Advanced Tokamak (CAT) concept uses physics models to show that by carefully shaping the plasma and the distribution of current in the plasma, fusion plant operators can suppress turbulent eddies in the plasma. This would reduce heat loss and allow more efficient reactor operation. This advance could help achieve self-sustaining plasma and smaller, less expensive power plants.
Summer interns working for PPPL did hands-on research from their computers in their bedrooms or on their dining room tables all over the U.S. They worked closely with PPPL physicists and engineers on research aimed at understanding ionized gases called plasmas.
Researchers are using smaller tokamaks and computer models to test approaches for suppressing runaway electrons in plasmas. This research used measurements and modeling to demonstrate that perturbations to the magnetic field in a tokamak fusion plasma can suppress high-energy runaway electrons. The results could help improve the operation of ITER and other future fusion devices.
In a conventional tokamak, the cross-section of the plasma is shaped like the letter D. Facing the straight part of the D on the inside side of the donut-shaped tokamak is called positive triangularity. New research suggests that reversing the plasma—negative triangularity--reduces how much the plasma interacts with the surfaces of the tokamak for reduced wear.
Results of a heat-confinement experiment on the twisty magnetic Wendelstein 7-X stellarator in Germany could enable devices based on the W7-X design to lead to a practical fusion reactor.
Researchers at PPPL have used supercomputers and a state-of-the-art computer code to simulate plasma in fusion devices under a wider range of conditions than ever before.
Scientists at PPPL have transferred a technique from one realm of plasma physics to another to enable the more efficient design of powerful magnets for doughnut-shaped fusion facilities known as tokamaks.
Expert Q&A: Do breakthrough cases mean we will soon need COVID boosters? The extremely contagious Delta variant continues to spread, prompting mask mandates, proof of vaccination, and other measures. Media invited to ask the experts about these and related topics.
The virtual ninth annual global gathering presented leading experimental and theoretical methods for avoiding or mitigating the greatest challenge to doughnut-shaped tokamak fusion devices.
Achieving fusion ignition – the process that powers the sun, stars and thermonuclear weapons – has been a decades-long goal for inertial confinement fusion research. On Aug. 8, 2021, an experiment at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) made a significant step toward ignition, achieving a yield of more than 1.3 megajoules (MJ). This is enabled by focusing laser light from NIF - the size of three football fields - onto a target the size of a BB that produces a hot-spot the diameter of a human hair, generating more than 10 quadrillion watts of fusion power for 100 trillionths of a second. This advance puts researchers at the threshold of fusion ignition, an important goal of the NIF, and opens access to a new experimental regime.
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