New Fusion Record Achieved in Tungsten-Encased Reactor
liar writes:
https://gizmodo.com/new-fusion-record-achieved-tungsten-encased-reactor-1851457745
A tokamak in France set a new record in fusion plasma by encasing its reaction in tungsten, a heat-resistant metal that allows physicists to sustain hot plasmas for longer, and at higher energies and densities than carbon tokamaks.
[...] "The recent achievement was made in WEST (tungsten (W) Environment in Steady-state Tokamak), a tokamak operated by the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). WEST was injected with 1.15 gigajoules of power and sustained a plasma of about 50 million degrees Celsius for six minutes. It achieved this record after scientists encased the tokamak's interior in tungsten, a metal with an extraordinarily high melting point. Researchers from Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory used an X-ray detector inside the tokamak to measure aspects of the plasma and the conditions that made it possible."
[...] Earlier this year, the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy installed a tungsten diverter in its KSTAR tokamak, replacing the device's carbon diverter. Tungsten has a higher melting point than carbon, and according to Korea's National Research Council of Science and Technology, the new diverter improves the reactor's heat flux limit two-fold. KSTAR's new diverter enabled the institute's team to sustain high-ion temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius for longer.
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