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Fusion Experiment Demonstrates Cheaper Stellerator Using Creative Magnet Workaround
Popular Science reports that early last week, researchers at the U.S. Energy Department's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory revealed their new "MUSE" stellarator — "a unique fusion reactor that uses off-the-shelf and 3D-printed materials to contain its superheated plasma." The researchers...
Stellarators typically rely on complicated electromagnets that have complex shapes and create their magnetic fields through the flow of electricity. Conceived by physicist Allen Boozer at PPPL in the early 1980s, quasisymmetry means that although the shape of the magnetic field inside the stellarator may not be the same around the physical shape of the stellarator, the magnetic field's strength is uniform around the device, leading to good plasma confinement and higher likelihood that fusion reactions will occur. "The fact that we were able to design and build this stellarator is a real achievement," said Tony Qian, a graduate student in the Princeton Program in Plasma Physics, which is based at PPPL.
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