Today's forecast: How to predict crucial plasma pressure in future fusion facilities
Published Date: 9/20/2019
Source: phys.org
A key requirement for future facilities that aim to capture and control on Earth the fusion energy that drives the sun and stars is accurate predictions of the pressure of the plasma—the hot, charged gas that fuels fusion reactions inside doughnut-shaped tokamaks that house the reactions. Central to these predictions is forecasting the pressure that the scrape-off layer, the thin strip of gas at the edge of the plasma, exerts on the divertor—the device that exhausts waste heat from fusion reactions.