Thursday, February 4, 2016

More Fusion Progress...

...maybe. Developing fusion power is tricky. After all, nature needs an entire star to do it.

 The Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Griefswald (A mouthful in English, let alone German) managed to successfully operate a stellarator and produce plasma for a fraction of a section. Doesn't sound like much, but it is.

A stellarator is similar to a tokamak, but where a tokamak uses electric current to contain the plasma, a stellarator uses a complex arrangement of magnets. It's argued that while harder to build, a stellarator will be easier to operate once built - important if you want to think long term.

Baby steps.

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