stellarators tagged posts

Using Artificial Intelligence to Speed up and Improve the most Computationally-Intensive aspects of Plasma Physics in Fusion

Illustration combining the ideas of artificial intelligence and fusion(Illustration credit: Kyle Palmer / PPPL Communications Department)

Researchers look to machine learning to optimize the design and control of stellarators and tokamaks. Researchers are using artificial intelligence to perfect the design of the vessels surrounding the super-hot plasma, optimize heating methods and maintain stable control of the reaction for increasingly long periods. A new article explains how a researcher team used machine learning to avoid magnetic perturbations, or disruptions, which destabilize fusion plasma.

The intricate dance of atoms fusing and releasing energy has fascinated scientists for decades. Now, human ingenuity and artificial intelligence are coming together at the U.S...

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Common Household Cleaner can Boost effort to Harvest Fusion Energy on Earth

PPPL physicist Federico Nespoli at the Large Helical Device in Japan. (Photo courtesy of the Japanese National Institute of Fusion Science. Collage by Kiran Sudarsanan.) 

Scientists have found that adding a common household cleaning agent – the mineral boron contained in such cleaners as Borax – can vastly improve the ability of some fusion energy devices to contain the heat required to produce fusion reactions on Earth the way the sun and stars do.

Physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) working with Japanese researchers, made the observation on the Large Helical Device (LHD) in Japan, a twisty magnetic facility that the Japanese call a “heliotron...

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