Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Han, H.
• Park, S. J.
• Sung, C.
• Kang, J.
• Lee, Y. H.
• Chung, J.
• Hahm, T. S.
• Kim, B.
• Park, J.-K.
• Bak, J. G.
• Cha, M. S.
• Choi, G. J.
• Choi, M. J.
• Gwak, J.
• Hahn, S. H.
• Jang, J.
• Lee, K. C.
• Kim, J. H.
• Kim, S. K.
• Kim, W. C.
• Ko, J.
• Ko, W. H.
• Lee, C. Y.
• Lee, J. H.
• Lee, J. K.
• Lee, J. P.
• Lee, K. D.
• Park, Y. S.
• Seo, J.
• Yang, S. M.
• Yoon, S. W.

Titel

A sustained high-temperature fusion plasma regime facilitated by fast ions

Ist Teil von

• Nature (London), 2022-09, Vol.609 (7926), p.269-275

Ort / Verlag

London: Nature Publishing Group

Erscheinungsjahr

2022

Link zum Volltext

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Nuclear fusion is one of the most attractive alternatives to carbon-dependent energy sources1. Harnessing energy from nuclear fusion in a large reactor scale, however, still presents many scientific challenges despite the many years of research and steady advances in magnetic confinement approaches. State-of-the-art magnetic fusion devices cannot yet achieve a sustainable fusion performance, which requires a high temperature above 100 million kelvin and sufficient control of instabilities to ensure steady-state operation on the order oftens of seconds2,3. Here we report experiments at the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research4 device producing a plasma fusion regime that satisfies most ofthe above requirements: thanks to abundant fast ions stabilizing the core plasma turbulence, we generate plasmas at a temperature of 100 million kelvin lasting up to 20 seconds without plasma edge instabilities or impurity accumulation. A low plasma density combined with a moderate input power for operation is key to establishing this regime by preserving a high fraction of fast ions. This regime is rarely subject to disruption and can be sustained reliably even without a sophisticated control, and thus represents a promising path towards commercial fusion reactors.