Fusion News

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, Medicine Dec. 21, 2017 WASHINGTON – A decision by the U.S. to withdraw from the ITER project – a large international burning plasma experiment – could isolate scientists from the international effort and require a new domestic approach to study fusion, says a new report by the National Academies of … Read more

AIP By Mitch Ambrose | 9 June 2017 A National Academies panel tasked with developing a multi-decade strategy for magnetically confined burning plasma research held its first meeting on June 5. The head of the Energy Department’s fusion energy sciences program urged the panel to “be bold” in its report, which will consider scenarios in … Read more

Krell Institute Fellow Reflections University of Rochester Collin Stillman configures the target chamber for a plasma experiment at the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics. Image courtesy of Collin Stillman. Collin Stillman creates bits of stars on Earth for his University of Rochester doctoral research. The university houses the Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE), … Read more

Tokamak Energy 20 December 2017 Research charting new route to fusion holds top three positions in ‘most read’ charts Oxfordshire based company research papers hold top spot for third year running While Ed Sheeran battles it out for the Christmas number one, fusion scientists have their own charts of exciting results, the Nuclear Fusion journal’s … Read more

DOE 12.19.17 Two protons (green), after “tunneling’’ through their repulsive electrostatic barrier and undergoing weak and strong interactions, fuse together to produce a deuteron (the lightest nucleus) (yellow), a positron, and a neutrino. The Science The fusion of two protons initiates the primary nuclear cycle that powers the Sun. The rate of this low-energy, weak-interaction … Read more

Newswise 2017-12-19 International collaborators advance physics basis for tokamak plasma confinement at low rotation, potentially benefiting a fusion reactor. Credit: Image courtesy of General Atomics/DIII-D National Fusion Facility U.S.- and China-based magnetic fusion scientists in the control room of the DIII-D tokamak in San Diego. Inset: Almost identical electron temperature profiles (shown in top plot … Read more

Eurofusion Q. Are there any other tokamaks in operation around the world? A. There are many tokamaks in operation around the world, all contributing to international efforts to realise commercial fusion power. As well as JET, the other tokamaks in Europe, which are part of the EUROfusion agreement include ASDEX -Upgrade, MAST-Upgrade, TCV, and WEST. … Read more

Physics December 15, 2017 A new model provides a detailed visualization of the clustering of protons and neutrons within the excited nuclear compound formed just after two nuclei collide and fuse. B. Schuetrumpf and W. Nazarewicz, Phys. Rev. C (2017) Merger snapshots. Simulations reveal the clustering of protons and neutrons within the nuclear compound formed … Read more

American Security Project Oct 27, 2017 On June 2017, a study was published by the scientific journal Nature Physics, announcing an advance toward fusion energy development. Researchers at the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) partnered with scientists from the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire, U.K. to develop “a new type of … Read more

PPPL December 14, 2017 Image of plasma disruption in experiment on JET, left, and disruption-free experiment on JET, right. Training the FRNN neural network to predict disruptions calls for assigning weights to the data flow along the connections between nodes. Data from new experiments is then put through the network, which predicts “disruption” or “non-disruption.” … Read more