Research

Identifying suitable materials for building a fusion power plant is a very broad challenge. In addition to managing the radiation environment across the facility, there is a unique set of requirements for anything that faces the plasma directly. For these plasma-facing wall materials, we need to know how they erode (shed material) so that we […]

If you happen to hear that “fusion has evolved into an engineering challenge,” there is a lot of truth in that simplification. Our global community is expanding research projects to better address the engineering unknowns related to producing energy from a fusion device. The science and plasma physics of fusion energy remains a big part […]

If you put enough heating power into a confined plasma, then it will self-organize into a state of improved confinement. The amount of input power required for this transition depends on the species of plasma. It takes more power to reach this higher confinement in a proton plasma compared to a deuterium plasma. As we […]

As the pressure in our fusion plasma increases, the plasma develops the ability to alter the makeup of the magnetic field that contains it. Some of these alterations are helpful and actually improve containment (see bootstrap current). Other alterations are not so helpful, and that’s why you’ll often hear researchers exclaim “tearing modes!” in the […]

An open access review of the high poloidal-beta scenario developed jointly by DIII-D and EAST has recently been published by Siye Ding and Andrea Garofalo. This is a contender for the plasma scenario that will power the US Fusion Pilot Plant (FPP).

https://davidpace.com/9514-2/

Machine learning (ML) is rapidly growing in popularity as new tools for applying these techniques to plasma control are developed. You’ve probably seen numerous media mentions of those projects. ML is also incredibly helpful in data analysis and modeling. Just as our doctors might use ML to read our x-rays, today’s fusion researchers can use […]