CCFE 05/03/2018 Professor Howard Wilson returned to Culham as Programme Director at the start of October. He spoke to us about what has changed since he worked here previously, and his hopes for research towards the first demonstration fusion reactors. As well as his CCFE role, Howard is Chair at the University of York as … Read more
Washington Post Dino Grandoni | March 7, 2018 Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the retiring chair of the House Science Committee, has rarely been in agreement with Democrats. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call) The House Science, Space and Technology Committee is known for its partisan bickering. Under Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), Republicans opened probes into … Read more
Reuters March 6, 2018 FILE PHOTO – A man walks past a block of stone with the name of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) organization headquarters in Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, Southern France, October 6, 2016. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier Bernard Bigot, director-general of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project, or ITER, said the administration’s budget cuts would reduce … Read more
CCFE Nuclear fusion is one of the most promising options for generating large amounts of carbon-free energy in the future. Illustration of the fusion reaction Fusion is the process that heats the Sun and all other stars, where atomic nuclei collide together and release energy (in the form of neutrons, see diagram on the right). … Read more
Geek Wire by Alan Boyle on February 14, 2018 The promise of natural gas, shale oil, renewable energy and conventional nuclear power all pale in comparison to the promise of clean, potentially abundant fusion power — and that’s attracting increasing attention from science-savvy entrepreneurs. General Fusion says it has the world’s largest and most powerful … Read more
By Paul Driessen Feb. 27, 2018 Importing 65% of US oil in 2005 vs 100% of many key minerals now (from China and Russia) Oil and natural gas aren’t just fuels. They supply building blocks for pharmaceuticals; plastics in vehicle bodies, athletic helmets, and numerous other products; and complex composites in solar panels and wind … Read more
Fuse.net The Summer University for Plasma Physics and Fusion Research organised by the Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics will be organised between 17th and 21st September in Greifswald, Germany.The lectures are designed for physics and engineering students of European universities who passed their bachelor (undergraduate) courses and not yet started nor decided their PhD project. … Read more
CCFE 27/02/2018 CCFE’s fusion power plant studies are set to benefit from an upgrade to key software code PROCESS. The project to modernise PROCESS is driving greater partnership with fusion researchers abroad as well as making it easier to navigate for key users. Culham researchers use the code to answer complex questions about the design … Read more
Dartmouth Journal of Undergraduate Science February 24, 2018 | Ted Northup According to a recent report on nuclear fusion, scientists may have discovered an optimal model for regulating plasma turbulence while still achieving desired functional results. A Brazilian researcher, Vinicius Duarte of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, recently developed a conceptual regulation of plasma turbulence … Read more
The Engineer By Stuart Nathan 22nd February 2018 Tokamak Energy’s new CEO plans on using his commercial nous to get fusion-generated electricity on the National Grid by 2030 Energy generation by nuclear fusion is one of society’s biggest technological challenges. Decades after fusion was first demonstrated, there has been no obvious breakthrough on this front, … Read more