![]() The findings highlight a key hurdle for researchers to avoid when seeking to reproduce fusion reactions in spherical tokamaks-devices shaped more like cored apples than more widely used doughnut-shaped conventional tokamaks. ![]() "And we now have a way of quantifying these values through computer simulations." "The results indicate that when designing and operating spherical tokamak experiments, care must be taken to ensure that the plasma pressure does not exceed certain critical values at certain locations in the ," he said. ![]() "These simulations likely explain an experimental observation made over 12 years ago," Jardin said. Increasing the power also raises pressure in the plasma to the point where the plasma becomes unstable and the plasma motion flattens out the temperature, they found. Through recent high-resolution computer simulations, Jardin and colleagues showed what can cause the temperature to stay flat or even decrease in the center of the plasma that fuels fusion reactions, even as more heating power is beamed in. Fusion combines light elements in the form of plasma to release massive amounts of energy. Solving the mystery could contribute to efforts around the world to create and control fusion on Earth to produce a virtually inexhaustible source of safe, clean and carbon-free energy to generate electricity while fighting climate change. "So this was a big mystery: Why does this happen?" "Normally, the more beam power you put in, the higher the temperature gets," said Stephen Jardin, head of the theory and computational science group that performed the calculations, and lead author of a proposed explanation published in Physical Review Letters.
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