Gang Du’s Post

For the first time, the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy’s (KFE) Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) fusion reactor has reached temperatures seven times that of the Sun’s core. Achieved during testing between December 2023 and February 2024, this sets a new record for the fusion reactor project. KSTAR, the researchers behind the reactor report, managed to maintain temperatures of 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 million degrees Celsius) for 48 seconds. For reference, the temperature of the core of our Sun is 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million degrees Celsius). Apply 👉 #vietnam #thailand #taiwan #southkorea #philippines #hongkong #korea #malaysia #singapore #indonesia #china #asia #usa #japan #india #cambodia #laos #mongolia #myanmar #salta #argentina #australia #southamerica #brazil #CDNDigital #foxandfriends #spain #CebuInFocus #NustarResort #SRP #southkorea #artificialsun #fusion

The Korea Institute of Fusion Energy’s (KFE) Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) fusion reactor has achieved a breakthrough, reaching temperatures seven times hotter than the Sun’s core. This milestone, recorded between December 2023 and February 2024, marks a new record for the project. Sustaining temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius for 48 seconds and maintaining the high confinement mode (H-mode) for over 100 seconds. KSTAR’s success is attributed to tungsten divertors, vital components that expel waste gases and endure substantial heat loads. This advancement holds promise for future fusion projects like ITER.

A new type of superconducting magnet developed by researchers at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) at the Massachusetts Insitute of Technology (MIT) two years ago is ready to be used in fusion reactors. The researchers published six papers describing the various aspects of the new magnets, from fabrication to overall performance, to confirm that the magnets met the challenging conditions of a fusion power plant. The Tokamak fusion reactor, where extremely powerful magnets hold the fusion fuel in place, is central to the recent successes. This has only been possible with magnets made with superconducting material that need to be maintained at four degrees Kelvin (-270 degrees Celsius) to work. In September 2021, researchers at the PSFC developed a new type of magnet that could function at 20 Kelvin (-253 degrees Celsius). Nicknamed REBCO for its constituent material, rare-earth barium copper oxide, the material offered several advantages compared to other materials but had to be extensively tested before being used in a fusion reactor. The major and visible difference with REBCO was the lack of insulation that other superconductor-based magnets required. Like electrical wires, conventional superconducting magnets are also protected by insulation between thin ribbons of the material that make up the magnet. This prevents short circuits between wires. The researchers will now use REBCO to build the SPARC fusion reactor for Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a spin-off company at Devens, Massachusetts. #nuclearenergy #fusion #superconductors #magnetism #powerplant https://lnkd.in/gJuakfBH

7 times hotter than Sun…. Fusion is a process that mimics the same process that generates light and heat from stars. It involves fusing hydrogen and other light elements to release tremendous power that experts in the field hope to harness for unlimited, zero-carbon electricity. Scientists in South Korea have announced a new world record for the length of time they sustained temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius — seven times hotter than the sun’s core — during a nuclear fusion experiment, in what they say is an important step forward for this futuristic energy technology. Nuclear fusion seeks to replicate the reaction that makes the sun and other stars shine, by fusing together two atoms to unleash huge amounts of energy. Often referred to as the holy grail of climate solutions, fusion has the potential to provide limitless energy without planet-warming carbon pollution. The most common way of achieving fusion energy involves a donut shaped reactor called a tokamak in which hydrogen variants are heated to extraordinarily high temperatures to create a plasma. We have the ability to be completely energy independent using nuclear energy, but the powers to be will never allow that to happen. We are stuck paying high electricity bills while we have perfected this technology back when Edison, Tesla and Franklin were mastering it. Feel free to leave your thoughts. 👇🏾 https://lnkd.in/enPX8FKg

Which #tokamak and #stellarator #fusion questions has the #JOREK code community been working on in the last few years? Find a full review here, just accepted for publication in the journal Nuclear Fusion: https://lnkd.in/dk8kJ2t4 High level results include studies of benign termination of runaway electron beams, vertical foce mitigation via massive impurity injection, turbulence and tungsten transport in plasmas with external perturbation fields, neutral particle dynamics in the scrape-off layer, flux pumping in the plasma core, and first advanced stellarator applications. For major model developments standing out are the coupling to the #CARIDDI code regarding the interaction with volumetric 3D wall structures, an establishment of advanced models for the scrape-off layer including kinetic neutrals and impurities, implementation of advanced runaway electron models, and the formulation of fully kinetic ITG/TEM models.

"Business Wars" (of the future). The race to solve the problem of energy generation by nuclear fusion has - like BetaMax vs. VHS, or Blockbuster vs. Netflix Business Models- a very interesting story that, as we speak, is in the making. the Stellarator vs. the Tokamak. Objective of both approaches is the same: magnetic confinement of the plasma, ensuring that the thing does not explode. Interesting for scientists. To me, who am not and I barely understand 5% of this, it has caught my attention that there are companies trying to do it on their own...just imagine that a company patented the solution before a public entity or a federated entity of governments it's scary.... https://lnkd.in/dbX7nRJM

A 6 minutes fusion record. Scientists announced on May 7th that the Tungsten (its chemical symbol is W, and it's the material forming the inner walls) Environment in Steady-state Tokamak (WEST), has been able to sustain a plasma with a temperature of 50 million degrees Celsius for 6 minutes. Even if that's not the highest temperature reached in a fusion reactor, it's the first time such a temperature has been maintained for so long. WEST is located in Caradache, France, and the experience gained by its operation will be invaluable in order to get the maximum profit from ITER, a nearby fusion reactor which, when finished, be the world's largest tokamak. https://lnkd.in/dQcyFi-W #physics #physicsnews #tokamak #fusion #nuclearfusion #plasma #west #iter

I am very excited to share the publication of the newest ARC-class tokamak "MANTA: A Negative-Triangularity NASEM-Compliant Fusion Pilot Plant": https://lnkd.in/eb647ehH MANTA (Modular Adjustable Negative Triangularity ARC-class) is a fusion pilot plant that satisfies all of the criteria laid out in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) report "Bringing Fusion to the U.S. Grid" for the demonstration of a path to the commercial viability of nuclear fusion energy. MANTA leverages negative triangularity (NT) to take a "power-handling first" approach to reactor design. NT blocks access to H-mode, preventing the steep edge gradients that produce edge-localized modes. Not operating in H-mode has the additional benefit of allowing for large radiated power fractions, reducing the power incident on the divertor targets. The result is a pulsed, radiative, ELM-free tokamak with a predicted fusion power of 450 MW and a plasma gain of 11.5 with only 23.5 MW of power to the scrape-off layer (SOL). This low P_SOL together with impurity seeding and high density at the separatrix yields a peak heat flux of just 2.8 MW/m^2. Neutronics simulations predict a tritium breeding ratio of 1.15, toroidal field coil lifetimes of 3100 +/- 400 MW-yr, and poloidal field coil lifetimes of at least 890+/- 40 MW-yr. From balance of plant modeling, MANTA is expected to generate 90 MW of net electricity at an electricity gain factor of 2.4. Systems-level economic analysis estimates an overnight cost of US$3.4 billion, well below the NASEM of less than US$5 billion. This work started off as a joint class between Columbia and MIT in Fall 2022, and it took longer than many of us expected to finalize the design. I therefore want to thank my many, many coauthors for all of the hours they've spent getting MANTA to this point. I look forward to seeing how MANTA may change in the future as we learn more about negative triangularity.

Fusion record paves way for commercial reactors The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) hits a new fusion reactor endurance record that could open the door to practical fusion power on a commercial scale. Using a tungsten lining, the WEST reactor held a reaction for six minutes. Fusion reactions may power the Sun and make life on Earth possible, but duplicating that process on this planet is currently stuck at two ends of an extreme. On the one hand, fusion can be set off instantly in the heart of a hydrogen bomb with enough energy released to blast a city off the map. At the other, fusion can be induced on a lab-bench level at such low energy returns that such a setup was showcased at the General Electric pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair, where it regularly fused atoms together for the public. The hard part is getting these two extremes to meet somewhere in the middle. No, that's not right. The hard part is to get them to meet in the form of a reactor that can generate more energy than it takes in on a sustained, practical, commercial scale. To do this, the reactor doesn't just need to achieve fusion or do so for an extended period. It needs to be able to do so on a large enough scale using a machine that can stand up to all of the stresses of recreating the conditions in the heart of the Sun. According to the US Department of Energy's PPPL, the recent record set by the W (the chemical symbol for tungsten) Environment in Steady-state Tokamak (WEST) of sustaining a reaction for six minutes after an injection of 1.15 gigajoules of power steady-state central electron temperature of 4 keV isn't an absolute record. There are other tokamaks that have done better, WEST scores in the practicality stakes. Located at the nuclear research center of Cadarache, Bouches-du-Rhône in Provence, France, WEST is a reconfigured version of the Tore Supra tokamak. During the six-minute run, the plasma suspended inside the reactor's super-powerful magnetic fields reached a temperature of 50 million ºC (90 million ºF) and achieved 15% more energy with twice the plasma density. But the real showstopper was that this was done with a tokamak chamber lined with tungsten. Earlier versions used a graphite lining, which achieved better performance. But graphite tends to absorb the fuel into itself, which is undesirable in a commercial reactor. Tungsten has a much lower rate of this, making it more practical and desirable. However, tungsten atoms can also get into the plasma, rapidly cooling it. PPPL says that WEST is very far from a practical reactor, but it is a major step as the laboratory works on how to tweak the tungsten. "The tungsten-wall environment is far more challenging than using carbon," said Delgado-Aparicio, PPPL’s head of advanced projects and lead scientist for the physics research and the X-ray detector project. "This is, simply, the difference between trying to grab your kitten at home versus trying to pet the wildest lion."

CFS was spun out of MIT in 2018 to commercialize fusion power using a breakthrough magnet design. Both CFS and Realta are working to deploy reactors that use powerful magnetic fields to hold burning plasma in place so that hydrogen nuclei can fuse, a process that releases immense amounts of heat. CFS’s reactor is what’s known as a tokamak, which coerces plasma into a doughnut-like shape.  HTS (high temperature superconductors) https://lnkd.in/djdaKp9S