Fusion Diagnostics Heat Up Across the US

Oak Ridge National Lab 22-Oct-2015 Teams are developing tools to monitor and control ITER plasma Newswise — ITER, the world’s largest tokamak now under construction in France, will have over 60 diagnostic systems installed to enable plasma control, optimize plasma performance, and support machine protection¬. Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in … Read more

The bizarre reactor that might save nuclear fusion

ScienceMag By Daniel Clery | 21 October 2015 If you’ve heard of fusion energy, you’ve probably heard of tokamaks. These doughnut-shaped devices are meant to cage ionized gases called plasmas in magnetic fields while heating them to the outlandish temperatures needed for hydrogen nuclei to fuse. Tokamaks are the workhorses of fusion—solid, symmetrical, and relatively … Read more

Step into the nuclear future

GE Look Ahead at The Economist By GE Look ahead Posted October 18, 2015 What if fusion became commercial? Nuclear fusion, says Stephen Hawking, could “provide an inexhaustible supply of energy, without pollution or global warming”. The technology’s promises are many, but how would the arrival of commercial fusion affect the design of our energy … Read more

Siemens to work on ITER fusion heating systems

The Engineer 14 October 2015 Siemens and Fusion for Energy (F4E) are collaborating on the heating systems for ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), the technology project hoping to validate fusion energy’s potential. F4E – the EU’s branch of ITER – will partner with Siemens to develop three units of equipment that will host power supplies … Read more

Science writers visit MIT’s fusion experiment

MIT Paul Rivenberg | PSFC | October 14, 2015 In the control room, Dr. Bob Mumgaard demonstrates how the plasma in a glow discharge tube responds to magnetic fields. Fusion devices like MIT’s Alcator C-Mod tokamak use magnets to keep hot plasma contained and away from the walls of the device. Paul Rivenberg On the … Read more

X Marks the Spot

Oxfordvirtual.com OCTOBER 11, 2015BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY X MARKS THE SPOT: RESEARCHERS CONFIRM NOVEL METHOD FOR CONTROLLING PLASMA ROTATION TO IMPROVE FUSION PERFORMANCE (PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS) Representative plasma geometries, with the X-point location circled in red. (Reprinted from T. Stoltzfus-Dueck et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 245001, 2015. Copyright 2015 by the American Physical Society.) By … Read more

Is nuclear fusion about to change our world?

CNN By Thom Patterson Wed October 7, 2015 (Video is included in the CNN post, click the link to watch it) Hey 21st century, where’s that nuclear fusion power reactor you promised? Tens of billions of dollars have been spent in the past 60 years, entire careers have been invested, but the ability to produce … Read more

Fusion reactors hailed as the future of nuclear energy

UK news Yahoo Fri, Oct 2, 2015 Press Association – The nuclear energy industry should embrace fusion reactors, it has been suggested Fusion reactors could become an economically viable way of generating electricity within decades and replace traditional nuclear power or fossil fuels, scientists have said. Advances in superconductor technology have led researchers from Durham … Read more