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New Fusion Record Achieved in Tungsten-Encased Reactor A tokamak successful New Jersey acceptable a caller grounds successful fusion plasma by encasing its absorption successful tungsten, a heat-resistant metallic that allows physicists to prolong blistery plasmas for longer, and astatine higher energies and densities than c tokamaks. Studio Thought Seed of Chucky Was ‘Too Gay, Too Funny' A tokamak is simply a torus- (doughnut-) shaped fusion instrumentality that confines plasma utilizing magnetic fields, allowing scientists to fiddle with the superheated worldly and induce fusion reactions. The caller accomplishment was made successful WEST (tungsten (W) Environment successful Steady-state Tokamak), a tokamak operated by the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). WEST was injected with 1.15 gigajoules of powerfulness and sustained a plasma of astir 50 cardinal degrees Celsius for six minutes. It achieved this grounds aft scientists encased the tokamak’s interior successful tungsten, a metallic with an extraordinarily precocious melting point. Researchers from Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory utilized an X-ray detector wrong the tokamak to measurement aspects of the plasma and the conditions that made it possible. “These are beauteous results,” said Xavier Litaudon, a idiosyncratic with CEA and seat of the Coordination connected International Challenges connected Long duration OPeration (CICLOP), successful a PPPL release. “We person reached a stationary authorities contempt being successful a challenging situation owed to this tungsten wall.” Nuclear fusion occurs erstwhile atoms fuse, reducing their full fig and releasing a immense magnitude of vigor successful the process. It is not to beryllium confused with atomic fission, the inverse process by which atoms are divided to nutrient energy. Nuclear fission besides creates atomic waste, portion atomic fusion is seen arsenic a imaginable grail of vigor research: a cleanable process that could beryllium optimized to nutrient much vigor than it took to powerfulness the absorption successful the archetypal place. Hence the hype astir “limitless energy” and likewise optimistic musings. Earlier this year, the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy installed a tungsten diverter successful its KSTAR tokamak, replacing the device’s c diverter. Tungsten has a higher melting constituent than carbon, and according to Korea’s National Research Council of Science and Technology, the caller diverter improves the reactor’s vigor flux bounds two-fold. KSTAR’s caller diverter enabled the institute’s squad to prolong high-ion temperatures exceeding 100 cardinal degrees Celsius for longer. “The tungsten-wall situation is acold much challenging than utilizing carbon,” said Luis Delgado-Aparicio, pb idiosyncratic for PPPL’s physics probe and X-ray de...

#DisruptiveTech 🟢 Two teams of scientists have announced a breakthrough in fusion energy research, demonstrating for the first time the ability to simultaneously achieve high plasma density and confinement in a tokamak reactor. Derived from a Russian acronym, a tokamak is a donut-shaped experimental device that uses magnetic fields to make use of the energy of nuclear fusion. The announcement from the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science revealed that researchers achieved plasma conditions they had previously assumed were mutually exclusive — a density above the Greenwald limit and energy confinement quality roughly 50% better than standard high-confinement mode. One historical challenge lies in finding the balance for sustained fusion reactions. Increasing density often leads to instability and a loss of energy confinement, hampering the overall efficiency. The DOE noted in a press release that its scientists at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility were able to transcend the density limit “while simultaneously maintaining high confinement quality.” If net-positive fusion energy is to ever be achieved, density is key: the more atomic nuclei crashing into each other, the more efficient the reaction will be. Nearly 40 years ago, Martin Greenwald identified a density limit above which tokamak plasmas become unstable, and the so-called Greenwald limit has at best been exceeded by a factor of two in the ensuing decades. Meanwhile, in a study published in Physical Review Letters, physicists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison produced a tokamak plasma that is stable at 10 times the Greenwald limit. The findings may have implications for tokamak fusion reactors, though the researchers caution that their plasma is not directly comparable to that in a fusion reactor. Check out my report 'Feel the Energy: Fusion Power' for DISRUPTED Unboxed: https://lnkd.in/eJvJx_Dr #tokamak #fusionenergy Campaign Catapult, Pravo Consulting

China’s “Artificial Sun” Shatters Fusion Record With Over 17 Minutes of Plasma China’s EAST project has set a new global record by maintaining a high-confinement plasma state for over 17 minutes, paving the way for future clean energy solutions by mimicking the sun’s fusion process. China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), also known as the “artificial sun,” has set a new world record by sustaining high-confinement plasma for an impressive 1,066 seconds. This achievement, reached on January 20, marks a major step forward in the quest to develop fusion power as a clean and limitless energy source. The 1,066-second milestone represents a significant leap in fusion research. It was accomplished by the Institute of Plasma Physics (ASIPP) at the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS), part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This new record greatly exceeds the previous world record of 403 seconds, also set by EAST in 2023. A Step Towards Unlimited Clean Energy The ultimate goal of developing an artificial sun is to replicate the nuclear fusion processes that occur in the sun, providing humanity with a limitless and clean energy source, and enabling exploration beyond our solar system. Scientists worldwide have dedicated over 70 years to this ambitious goal. However, generating electricity from a nuclear fusion device involves overcoming key challenges, including reaching temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius, maintaining stable long-term operation, and ensuring precise control of the fusion process. #EnergyTransition https://lnkd.in/gCt2t4MG

US Scientists Address Runaway Electron Threat in Fusion Reactors Researchers at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have made a breakthrough in addressing one of the critical challenges in nuclear fusion: runaway electrons. Using the Summit supercomputer at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the team simulated a potential solution that could prevent damage caused by these highly energetic particles, marking a significant step toward realizing safe and sustainable fusion energy. Runaway Electrons: A Critical Challenge Runaway electrons are a byproduct of the fusion process. These negatively charged particles can be accelerated to extremely high energies—up to 100,000 times more than typical electrons in the plasma—posing a significant risk to the reactor’s structural integrity. • Damage Potential: These electrons, if unchecked, can cause severe harm to reactor walls, potentially halting operations and derailing the fusion process. • Fusion Goals: The issue is particularly critical for ITER, the world’s largest fusion reactor currently under construction in France, as it seeks to demonstrate the viability of fusion energy. Alfvén Waves as a Solution The PPPL team focused on Alfvén waves, which are natural oscillations in magnetized plasmas, as a mechanism to manage runaway electrons. • Simulation Findings: Using the Summit supercomputer, scientists demonstrated that Alfvén waves could effectively slow down or redirect runaway electrons before they cause damage. • Energy Dissipation: The waves transfer energy from the runaway electrons to the surrounding plasma, mitigating their destructive potential. Implications for ITER and Fusion Energy 1. Safer Reactor Operations: This discovery could enable safer and more stable operations in future fusion reactors, including ITER. 2. Enhanced Reactor Design: Insights from the simulation can guide the design of next-generation fusion systems to preemptively address runaway electron challenges. 3. Path to Clean Energy: By overcoming such technical hurdles, fusion energy moves closer to becoming a reliable, near-limitless source of clean energy. The Role of Computational Power The breakthrough was made possible by the Summit supercomputer, which allowed for highly detailed simulations of plasma behavior under extreme conditions. This underscores the critical role of advanced computational resources in tackling complex challenges in nuclear fusion. Future Prospects With this promising solution, scientists are optimistic about further refining the approach and integrating it into reactor designs. The success of such measures could significantly accelerate the timeline for achieving practical fusion energy, marking a transformative leap in clean energy technology.

#Stellarator #Fusion Nuclear Fusion’s New Idea: An Off-the-Shelf Stellarator: For a machine that’s designed to replicate a star, the world’s newest stellarator is a surprisingly humble-looking apparatus. The kitchen-table-size contraption sits atop stacks of bricks in a cinder-block room at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) in Princeton, N.J., its parts hand-labeled in marker. The PPPL team invented this nuclear-fusion reactor, completed last year, using mainly off-the-shelf components. Its core is a glass vacuum chamber surrounded by a 3D-printed nylon shell that anchors 9,920 meticulously placed permanent rare-earth magnets. Sixteen copper-coil electromagnets resembling giant slices of pineapple wrap around the shell crosswise. The arrangement of magnets forms the defining feature of a stellarator: an entirely external magnetic field that directs charged particles along a spiral path to confine a superheated plasma. Within this enigmatic fourth state of matter, atoms that have been stripped of their electrons collide, their nuclei fusing and releasing energy in the same process that powers the sun and other stars. Researchers hope to capture this energy and use it to produce clean, zero-carbon electricity. PPPL’s new reactor is the first stellarator built at this government lab in 50 years. It’s also the world’s first stellarator to employ permanent magnets, rather than just electromagnets, to coax plasma into an optimal three-dimensional shape. Costing only US $640,000 and built in less than a year, the device stands in contrast to prominent stellarators like Germany’s Wendelstein 7-X, a massive, tentacled machine that took $1.1 billion and more than 20 years to construct. Sixteen copper-coil electromagnets resembling giant slices of pineapple wrap around the stellarator’s shell. Jayme Thornton PPPL researchers say their simpler machine demonstrates a way to build stellarators far more cheaply and quickly, allowing researchers to easily test new concepts for future fusion power plants. The team’s use of permanent magnets may not be the ticket to producing commercial-scale energy, but PPPL’s accelerated design-build-test strategy could crank out new insights on plasma behavior that could push the field forward more rapidly. Indeed, the team’s work has already spurred the formation of two stellarator startups that are testing their own PPPL-inspired designs, which their founders hope will lead to breakthroughs in the quest for fusion energy. Are Stellarators the Future of Nuclear Fusion? The pursuit of energy production through nuclear fusion is considered by many to be the holy grail of clean energy. And it’s become increasingly important as a rapidly warming climate and soaring electricity demand have made the need for stable, carbon-free power ever more acute. Fusion offers the prospect of a nearly limitless source of… http://dlvr.it/TFpYGM

Pioneering Fusion Energy at PPPL: The Rise of the Stellarator As the global push for clean, limitless energy intensifies, stellarators—an often-overlooked nuclear fusion technology—are finally getting their moment. Recent breakthroughs at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) could redefine our approach to fusion energy, one of the most ambitious challenges of our time. PPPL’s latest innovation, a device called the Muse Stellarator, represents a radical shift in fusion research. Built on a modest $640,000 budget using off-the-shelf components, Muse employs permanent magnets for plasma confinement—making it a game-changer in terms of cost and flexibility. Unlike tokamaks, which require complex internal currents that can destabilize plasma, stellarators rely entirely on external magnetic fields to stabilize the superheated plasma, potentially supporting continuous operation, a key goal for energy production. Why is this important? Fusion energy promises a future of clean, nearly limitless power, without greenhouse emissions, nuclear meltdown risks, or long-term waste. Yet, reaching this potential requires containing plasma at millions of degrees—a feat that no approach has yet sustained. The PPPL Approach: While Germany’s Wendelstein 7-X stellarator took over two decades and $1.1 billion to build, Muse demonstrates a lean, fast prototyping model. The device’s design-build-test approach is inspiring startups, like Stellarex and Thea Energy, to pursue similar designs, aiming to scale fusion technology faster and more affordably. The Role of Advanced Computing & AI: Stellarator research, historically constrained by design complexity, has found new life thanks to advances in computational power. AI and high-performance computing now allow researchers to model and optimize magnetic fields with unprecedented speed, advancing both plasma stability and reactor efficiency. The next frontier lies in scaling these developments for commercial energy. Startups like Type One Energy are already gearing up, designing “Infinity One” in Tennessee as a testbed for the next-gen fusion pilot plants that could eventually feed fusion-generated electrons into the grid. With the expanding resources at PPPL and new interdisciplinary research into sustainable materials and quantum technologies, the path to fusion energy is becoming clearer. The stakes are enormous, but the progress is real. A world powered by safe, carbon-free fusion energy may be closer than ever. #NuclearFusion #CleanEnergy #Stellarators #PPPL #AI https://lnkd.in/euANYtkt

📢 **Exploring Enhanced Fusion Fuel Efficiency: New Research from PPPL** A groundbreaking study by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) suggests spin-polarized fusion fuels could be the key to more efficient and economical electricity generation via nuclear fusion. 🔬 **Key Findings:** - **Spin Polarization:** Adjusting the quantum spin properties of deuterium and tritium, the preferred fusion fuels, enhances tritium-burn efficiency up to tenfold. - **Efficiency Gains:** The approach could significantly reduce tritium requirements, slashing costs and improving reactor compactness. - **Safety and Licensing:** With less tritium needed, there are safety benefits and potential for streamlined licensing processes. 🌟 **Looking Ahead:** The study, published in *Nuclear Fusion*, opens avenues for integrating spin-polarized fuels into scalable technologies, ushering in new possibilities for cleaner energy. For more insights on this fusion innovation, dive into the full study or reach out to the team at PPPL. 🌐 #FusionEnergy #QuantumPhysics #InnovationInEnergy

Computing power (AI chip) and power supply will be key areas to address before Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) arrives. Coupled with ambitious sustainability goals, finding ample, reliable, affordable and carbon-neutral power sources is a difficult challenge. More than 100 years ago, Nikola Tesla devised the Wardenclyffe tower to transfer power currents around the globe by capturing the Earth's natural energy. His dream was to provide limitless electricity to the world for free, while this went against the interests of his investors like JP Morgan. Wardenclyffe was torn down, so was the giant leap in human civilization. Today, tech giants turn to nuclear fusion as the solution. Many fusion energy companies like Helion Energy have goals to be operational by 2030. Among them, a little known company called Blue Laser Fusion Inc. (BLF) is particularly interesting due to its novel laser fusion technology. BLF is a private venture funded company founded in 2022 by Shuji Nakamura, Ph.D., 2014 Nobel Laureate in Physics. Dr. Nakarmura is known for his contribution and invention of blue LED, which is the most difficult engineering invention in the history of human lighting in the past 100 years. BLF plans to complete its first prototype in 2025 and demonstrate a commercial-ready fusion reactor by 2030. https://lnkd.in/dXcrtWYW https://lnkd.in/dfx_DYkj

Materials science to the rescue. Tungsten can help stabilize nuclear fusion processes: https://lnkd.in/gVsWDQCr #fusion #nuclear #tungsten #materialsscience

Dr. Otto Octavius famously declared (in Spider-Man 2): “The power of the sun in the palm of my hand.” Today, what once seemed like science fiction is becoming reality, as humanity nears the ability to replicate the very forces that power the stars. China’s “artificial sun,” the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), just this month shattered records by sustaining plasma at 120 million degrees Celsius for 1,066 seconds—almost 18 minutes! (https://lnkd.in/d5cTxV3r). That seems brief, but the previous best was only 403 seconds, and we’re talking temperatures ten times hotter than our sun’s core. Each such advance edges us closer to harnessing fusion as an energy source, offering hope for clean, renewable power without the risks of nuclear fission. But as we celebrate this achievement, we should also ask: how does the effort balance ingenuity and hubris? No doubt, fusion is inherently safer than fission: There’s no risk of meltdowns, no weaponizable materials, and little radioactive waste. Its fuel (hydrogen isotopes like deuterium and tritium) is abundant (deuterium is found in seawater). Still, there are risks to harnessing a star’s power on—or even beneath—the surface of our only Earth… Fusion reactors are engineering marvels, but sustaining the extreme conditions they require currently consumes more energy than the reactors produce. Closing this energy gap is critical to making fusion viable. Tritium, while a promising fuel for fusion, is mildly radioactive, and any leaks could raise environmental concerns. Then, there’s the cost—the most important aspect, sadly, for so many in power and authority. It is simply staggering. China’s fusion research represents billions of dollars in investment, and their goal is to build a prototype fusion reactor by 2035, commercializing the technology by 2050 (Xinhua News). But, considering advancements in related technologies, that might actually be a conservative estimate. If fusion is to move beyond the laboratory, it may depend on the rapid evolution of AI and robotics—something that, of course, came to my mind, as developments here may help accelerate progress. AI’s ability to model complex systems and predict outcomes is already revolutionizing fusion research. Designing and maintaining reactors like EAST requires analyzing phenomenal amounts of data to optimize plasma behavior. AI can simulate conditions that would take humans years to test, rapidly refining efficiency and stability. Robotics, meanwhile, can step into roles that demand extreme precision and endurance in environments too dangerous for humans. Robots could be key in building, maintaining, and repairing fusion reactors, as well as handling tritium safely. Together, AI and robotics are transforming what’s possible in science, bridging gaps between theory and practice faster than ever before. [con’t in comments]…