After decades of inertial confinement fusion research, a record yield of more than 1.3 megajoules (MJ) from fusion reactions was achieved in the laboratory for the first time during an experiment at Lawrence Livermore National ...
Plasma Physics
Nov 8, 2021
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3804
The march towards fusion energy gain, required for commercial fusion energy, is not always visible. Progress occurs in fits and starts through experiments in national laboratories, universities, and more recently at private ...
Plasma Physics
Nov 8, 2021
3
53
The U.S. scientific community is currently conceptualizing the first nuclear fusion power plants, which will revolutionize energy production. Like the sun and stars, a fusion power plant will produce energy by fusing light ...
Plasma Physics
Nov 8, 2021
0
357
A high-tech fusion facility is like a thermos—both keep their contents as hot as possible. Fusion facilities confine electrically charged gas known as plasma at temperatures 10 times hotter than the sun, and keeping it ...
Plasma Physics
Oct 20, 2021
14
20
Physicists are like bees—they can cross-pollinate, taking ideas from one area and using them to develop breakthroughs in other areas. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory ...
Plasma Physics
Aug 20, 2021
1
765
A key challenge for scientists striving to produce on Earth the fusion energy that powers the sun and stars is preventing what are called runaway electrons, particles unleashed in disrupted fusion experiments that can bore ...
Plasma Physics
Aug 5, 2021
10
272
Scientists seeking to bring to Earth the fusion energy that drives the sun and stars use radio frequency (RF) waves—the same waves that bring radio and television into homes—to heat and drive current in the plasma that ...
Plasma Physics
Jul 14, 2021
0
13
Every day, the sun ejects large amounts of a hot particle soup known as plasma toward Earth where it can disrupt telecommunications satellites and damage electrical grids. Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's ...
Astronomy
Apr 28, 2021
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51
Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the Sun and all other stars. During fusion, the nuclei of two atoms are brought close enough together that they fuse together, releasing huge amounts of energy.
Condensed Matter
Mar 2, 2021
1
370
Perhaps the greatest technological challenge to harvesting on Earth the fusion energy that powers the sun and stars in future tokamak fusion reactors will be controlling the extreme heat that could strike the exhaust system ...
Plasma Physics
Feb 8, 2021
0
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