Scientists have found a mathematical shortcut that could help harness fusion energy, a potential source of clean electricity that could mitigate floods, heat waves, and other rising effects of climate change. The method allows researchers to more easily predict how well a stellarator—a twisty device designed to reproduce the fusion energy that powers the sun and stars—can retain the heat crucial to fusion reactions.
The technique measures how well a stellarator's magnetic field can hold on to the fastest-moving atomic nuclei in the plasma, boosting the overall heat and aiding theFinding magnetic cages that hold heat
"We can't simulate the motions of all the individual particles in all the possible magnetic fields—that would require almost infinite computing power," said Alexandra LeViness, a graduate student in at the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory ."Instead, we have to use a shortcut," said LeViness, lead author of the paper reporting the results in the journal"This research shows that we can find the best magnetic field shape for confining heat by calculating something easier—how far the fast particles drift away from the curved magnetic field surfaces in the center of the plasma," LeViness said.
In effect, the shortcut advances future stellarator research, LeViness said,"because the more fast-moving particles that stay in the center of the plasma, the hotter the fuel and the more efficient the stellarator will be." Current density profiles calculated by the SFINCS code vs. radial coordinate for three scaled-up equilibria compared to their original values. Credit:Fusion releases vast amounts of energy by combining light elements in the form of plasma—the hot, charged state of matter composed of
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