(March 13, 2015) Researchers from General Atomics and the U.S. Department of
Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have made a major
breakthrough in understanding how potentially damaging heat bursts inside a
fusion reactor can be controlled. Scientists performed the experiments on the
DIII-D National Fusion Facility, a tokamak operated by General Atomics in San
Diego. The findings represent a key step in predicting how to control heat
bursts in future fusion facilities including ITER, an international experiment
under construction in France to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion energy.
This work is supported by the DOE Office of Science (Fusion Energy Sciences).