Enlarge / Plasma inside the tokamak at the EPFL. (credit: EPFL) As the world waits for construction of the largest fusion reactor yet, called ITER, smaller reactors with similar designs are still running. These reactors, called tokamaks, help us test both hardware and software. The hardware testing helps us refine things like the materials used […]
Enlarge / The interior of JET, configured as a scale model for ITER, overlaid with an image of the plasma present in the tokamak during experiments. (credit: EUROfusion ) On Wednesday, the EUROfusion consortium announced that the Joint European Torus (JET), located near Oxford in the UK, had set a new record for released energy. […]
Enlarge / The assembled magnet gets lowered into its testing apparatus. (credit: Commonwealth Fusion Systems) In 2015, a group of physicists at MIT did some calculations to rethink how we’re approaching the problem of fusion power. High-temperature, nonmetallic superconductors were now commercially available and could allow the generation of stronger magnetic fields, enabling a simpler, […]
Expand / / The magnetic fields in a tokamak. Based on who you ask, mix electricity is {} here (but nobody will buy my sekrit design! ) ) , never likely to occur (so quit wasting money!) , or even a challenging problem that may be a partial remedy to a much harder issue. The […]