http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Those who perceive challenges as opportunities will find themselves drawn to the levels of sophistication and complexity underpinning the ITER project. Connecting the different systems of ITER and ensuring their smooth operation is not an easy task. The glue, otherwise known as the Control Data Access and Communication (CODAC) system, that holds firmly the systems of ITER together, and allows them to 'talk' between them, is a building block for securing the success of the project. http://phys.org/news286093178.html Physics Thu, 25 Apr 2013 07:19:49 EST news286093178 (Phys.org) —A once-promising approach for using next-generation, ultra-intense lasers to help deliver commercially viable fusion energy has been brought into serious question by new experimental results and first-of-a-kind simulations of laser-plasma interaction. http://phys.org/news283535830.html Physics Tue, 26 Mar 2013 16:57:40 EST news283535830 An international team of plasma physicists has used one of the world's most powerful lasers to create highly unusual plasma composed of hollow atoms. http://phys.org/news283417257.html Physics Mon, 25 Mar 2013 08:01:11 EST news283417257 Researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory have successfully demonstrated pulse tailoring, producing a time varying focal spot size known as 'focal zooming' on the world's largest operating krypton fluoride (KrF) gas laser. http://phys.org/news282997424.html Physics Wed, 20 Mar 2013 11:24:00 EST news282997424 The potential benefits of successful development of an inertial confinement fusion-based energy technology justify investment in fusion energy research and development as part of the long-term U.S. energy R&D portfolio, says a new report from the National Research Council. Although ignition of the fusion fuel has not yet been achieved, scientific and technological progress in inertial confinement fusion over the past decade has been substantial. Developing inertial fusion energy would require establishment of a national, coordinated, broad-based program, but achievement of ignition is a prerequisite. http://phys.org/news280583960.html Physics Wed, 20 Feb 2013 11:59:26 EST news280583960 Scientists around the world have crossed a threshold into a promising and challenging new era in the quest for fusion energy. So says physicist George "Hutch" Neilson, director of advanced projects at the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, in remarks prepared for the 2013 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston. http://phys.org/news280242334.html Physics Sat, 16 Feb 2013 13:05:49 EST news280242334 The European Fusion Development Agreement (EFDA) has published a roadmap which outlines how to supply fusion electricity to the grid by 2050. The roadmap to the realisation of fusion energy breaks the quest for fusion energy down into eight missions. For each mission, it reviews the current status of research, identifies open issues, proposes a research and development programme and estimates the required resources. It points out the needs to intensify industrial involvement and to seek all opportunities for collaboration outside Europe. http://phys.org/news277554231.html Technology Wed, 16 Jan 2013 10:24:04 EST news277554231 A researcher at the Universidad politécnica de Madrid (UPM, Spain) has patented a nuclear fusion reactor by inertial confinement that, apart from be used to generate electric power in plants, can be applied to propel ships. http://phys.org/news277387595.html Technology Mon, 14 Jan 2013 12:06:41 EST news277387595 (Phys.org)—New hardware lets engineers maintain the plasma used in fusion reactors in an energy-efficient, stable manner, making the system potentially attractive for use in fusion power plants. http://phys.org/news269189633.html Physics Thu, 11 Oct 2012 15:54:06 EST news269189633 Latest results from the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion device are giving researchers increasing confidence in prospects for the next-generation ITER project, the international experiment that is expected to pave the way for commercial fusion power plants. Operation with a new lining inside JET has demonstrated the suitability of materials for the much larger and more powerful ITER device. http://phys.org/news268920321.html Physics Mon, 08 Oct 2012 13:06:53 EST news268920321 Power from nuclear fusion reactors has the promise to be safe, sustainable and limitless. But science has not been able to bring fusion energy to the commercial energy market. This is partly because the operating limits of the reactor materials are not known. http://phys.org/news266587360.html Technology Tue, 11 Sep 2012 13:02:57 EST news266587360 (Phys.org) -- Fifteen years of work by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility (NIF) team paid off on July 5 with a historic record-breaking laser shot. The NIF laser system of 192 beams delivered more than 500 trillion watts (terawatts or TW) of peak power and 1.85 megajoules (MJ) of ultraviolet laser light to its target. Five hundred terawatts is 1,000 times more power than the United States uses at any instant in time, and 1.85 megajoules of energy is about 100 times what any other laser regularly produces today. http://phys.org/news261340167.html Physics Thu, 12 Jul 2012 19:29:46 EST news261340167 Scientists at Princeton University are composing the complex codes designed to instruct a new class of powerful computers that will allow researchers to tackle problems that were previously too difficult to solve. These supercomputers, operating at a speed called the "exascale," will produce realistic simulations of dazzlingly complex phenomena in nature such as fusion reactions, earthquakes and climate change. http://phys.org/news260448494.html Technology Mon, 02 Jul 2012 12:00:10 EST news260448494 A University of Washington lab has been working for more than a decade on fusion energy, harnessing the energy-generating mechanism of the sun. But in one of the twists of scientific discovery, on the way the researchers found a potential solution to a looming problem in the electronics industry. http://phys.org/news260113933.html Physics Thu, 28 Jun 2012 14:52:59 EST news260113933 The Department of Energy's Heavy Ion Fusion Science Virtual National Laboratory (HIFS-VNL), whose member institutions include LLNL, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, has recently completed a new accelerator designed to study an alternate approach to inertial fusion energy. http://phys.org/news259818549.html Physics Mon, 25 Jun 2012 05:00:01 EST news259818549 Imagine a world without man-made climate change, energy crunches or reliance on foreign oil. It may sound like a dream world, but University of Tennessee, Knoxville, engineers have made a giant step toward making this scenario a reality. http://phys.org/news258371927.html Physics Fri, 08 Jun 2012 10:58:58 EST news258371927 If the sun is anything, it is reassuring. It rises, sets, and rises again, allowing us to grow crops, get tan, and power homes, just to name a few of humanity's most important life-sustaining functions. No wonder it was considered a deity by countless ancient civilizations. http://phys.org/news247817719.html Space & Earth Tue, 07 Feb 2012 06:15:32 EST news247817719 Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Fusion Pellet Fueling Lab has been at the center of design and testing of plasma fueling systems for tokamak research applications for decades. Since the mid-1970s, lab researchers have been designing, testing and contributing hardware for fusion magnetic confinement experiments here in the United States and around the world. As the US ITER project moves from design and testing of components to manufacturing, the lab is making prototypes for the ITER tokamak. ITER's "first plasma" is planned for around the close of this decade. http://phys.org/news245068945.html Physics Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:00:02 EST news245068945 a leading design concept for producing nuclear fusion energy—can, under certain rare fault conditions, produce beams of very energetic "runaway" electrons that have the potential to damage interior surfaces of the device. In the event of such a fault, a tokamak-based nuclear fusion power plant will have to employ protection systems to prevent any damage. Now, scientists at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility have demonstrated a new method for controlling these high-energy electrons. http://phys.org/news240167470.html Physics Fri, 11 Nov 2011 11:50:02 EST news240167470 A key challenge in producing fusion energy is confining the plasma long enough for the ionized hydrogen to fuse and produce net power. Suppressing plasma turbulence is one approach to this, but the resulting increase in energy confinement is usually accompanied by undesirable increases in particle and impurity confinement, which can lead to plasma contamination and ash accumulation—and reduced power. At MIT's Alcator C-Mod tokamak reactor, scientists are investigating I-mode, an improved confinement regime, which may solve this problem. http://phys.org/news240167351.html Physics Thu, 10 Nov 2011 17:09:18 EST news240167351 A major upgrade to the DIII-D tokamak fusion reactor operated by General Atomics in San Diego will enable it to develop fusion plasmas that can burn indefinitely. Researchers installed a movable, 30-ton particle-beam heating system that drives electric current over a broad cross section of the magnetically confined plasma inside the reactor's vacuum vessel. Precise aiming of this beamline allows scientists to vary the spatial distribution of the plasma current to maintain optimal conditions for sustaining the high temperature plasmas needed for fusion energy production. http://phys.org/news240166977.html Physics Thu, 10 Nov 2011 17:03:04 EST news240166977 To achieve nuclear fusion for practical energy production, scientists often use magnetic fields to confine plasma. This creates a magnetic (or more precisely "magneto-hydrodynamic") fluid in which plasma is tied to magnetic field lines, and where regions of plasma can be isolated and heated to very high temperatures—typically 10 times hotter than the core of the sun! At these temperatures the plasma is nearly superconducting, and the magnetic field becomes tightly linked to the plasma, able to provide the strong force needed to hold in the hot fusion core. The overall plasma and magnetic field structure becomes akin to that of an onion, where magnetic field lines describe surfaces like the layers in the onion. While heat can be transported readily within the layers, conduction between layers is far more limited, making the core much hotter than the edge. http://phys.org/news240166907.html Physics Thu, 10 Nov 2011 17:01:56 EST news240166907 Nuclear fusion drives the stars, including our sun. But on Earth, despite efforts dating to the 1940s, sustained and controlled fusion for electrical power production has never been realized. Research persists, because few energy sources could be greener. Fusion yields far more energy than any other source per unit of mass; its heavy-hydrogen fuel is plentiful in sea water; burning it produces not a trace of carbon. http://phys.org/news238319133.html Physics Thu, 20 Oct 2011 09:10:02 EST news238319133 (PhysOrg.com) -- In the next 40 years, California's population is expected to surge from 37 million to 55 million and the demand for energy is expected to double. Given those daunting numbers, can California really reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, as required by an executive order? Scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who co-wrote a new report on California's energy future are optimistic that the target can be achieved, though not without bold policy and behavioral changes as well as some scientific innovation. http://phys.org/news225461934.html Technology Tue, 24 May 2011 13:20:01 EST news225461934 In the latest twist on optical knots, New York University physicists have discovered a new method to create extended and knotted optical traps in three dimensions. This method, which the NYU scientists describe in the Optical Society's open-access journal Optics Express, produces "bright" knots, where the maximum of the light intensity traces out a knotted trajectory in space, for the first time allowing microscopic objects to be trapped along the path of the knot. The method may even, one day, help enable fusion energy as a practical power source, according to the NYU team. http://phys.org/news219412025.html Physics Tue, 15 Mar 2011 12:48:06 EST news219412025 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists and engineers at the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are working with the U.S. ITER Project Office at ORNL, the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency and the ITER Organization to resolve issues with a critical component of the experimental fusion energy facility ITER. The VULCAN Engineering Diffractometer at SNS is being used to examine superconducting cables for ITER's central solenoid magnet, which induces the electrical current needed to confine and shape the plasma inside the reactor. http://phys.org/news214231369.html Physics Fri, 14 Jan 2011 12:43:02 EST news214231369 Researchers at MIT have taken steps toward practical fusion energy through better understanding of the physics that governs the interaction between plasmas and the material walls of the vessels that contain them. http://phys.org/news208428422.html Physics Mon, 08 Nov 2010 08:47:48 EST news208428422 Futuristic ideas for the use of superconductors, materials that allow electric current to flow without resistance, are myriad: long-distance, low-voltage electric grids with no transmission loss; fast, magnetically levitated trains; ultra-high-speed supercomputers; superefficient motors and generators; inexhaustible fusion energy - and many others, some in the experimental or demonstration stages. http://phys.org/news203346998.html Physics Fri, 10 Sep 2010 14:17:26 EST news203346998 (PhysOrg.com) -- Imagine if you could generate electricity using nuclear power that emitted no radioactivity: it would be the answer to the world's dream of finding a clean, sustainable energy source. http://phys.org/news190295239.html Physics Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:40:12 EST news190295239 A potential new energy source so controversial that people once regarded it as junk science is moving closer to acceptance by the mainstream scientific community. That's the conclusion of the organizer of one of the largest scientific sessions on the topic -- "cold fusion" -- being held in San Francisco for the next two days in the Moscone Center during the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). http://phys.org/news188377829.html Chemistry Sun, 21 Mar 2010 11:50:01 EST news188377829