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Little reactors may be best path to nuclear fusion
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429944.300-little-reactors-may-be-best-path-to-nuclear-fusion.html[font face=Serif][font size=5]Little reactors may be best path to nuclear fusion[/font]
05 November 2014 by Mark Harris
[font size=3]IT ALWAYS seems to be 30 years away. Controlled nuclear fusion seems no closer to being realised now than it was when the idea was put forward in the 1950s. But fusion power stations might be closer than anyone suspected – if we think small.
…
A major challenge is how to hold the chaotic plasma in place for more than the tiniest fraction of a second. Reactors like the one at ITER try to do it using magnetic fields produced with the aid of coils around the doughnut and superconducting magnets running up through the central hole. But that requires metres of costly, bulky shielding to protect the chilled magnets from energetic neutrons.
Jarboe's approach shrinks things down using a so-called spheromak design, in which current from the flowing plasma generates a magnetic field that, elegantly, confines the plasma itself. With no sensitive components inside the hole, spheromaks can be as small as desired.
Spheromaks were in vogue in the 1970s when Jarboe began working on them at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, but back then they couldn't confine a hot plasma for longer than the blink of an eye. The car-sized experiment that Jarboe has working today is the first spheromak to confine high-pressure plasma. "It could go on indefinitely if we had the cooling and power supply," he says.
…[/font][/font]
05 November 2014 by Mark Harris
[font size=3]IT ALWAYS seems to be 30 years away. Controlled nuclear fusion seems no closer to being realised now than it was when the idea was put forward in the 1950s. But fusion power stations might be closer than anyone suspected – if we think small.
…
A major challenge is how to hold the chaotic plasma in place for more than the tiniest fraction of a second. Reactors like the one at ITER try to do it using magnetic fields produced with the aid of coils around the doughnut and superconducting magnets running up through the central hole. But that requires metres of costly, bulky shielding to protect the chilled magnets from energetic neutrons.
Jarboe's approach shrinks things down using a so-called spheromak design, in which current from the flowing plasma generates a magnetic field that, elegantly, confines the plasma itself. With no sensitive components inside the hole, spheromaks can be as small as desired.
Spheromaks were in vogue in the 1970s when Jarboe began working on them at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, but back then they couldn't confine a hot plasma for longer than the blink of an eye. The car-sized experiment that Jarboe has working today is the first spheromak to confine high-pressure plasma. "It could go on indefinitely if we had the cooling and power supply," he says.
…[/font][/font]
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