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Fusion energy: Progress, partnerships, and the path to deployment
Over the past decade, fusion energy has moved decisively from scientific aspiration toward a credible pathway to a new energy technology. Thanks to long-term federal support, we have significantly advanced our fundamental understanding of plasma physics—the behavior of the superheated gases at the heart of fusion devices. This knowledge will enable the creation and control of fusion fuel under conditions required for future power plants. Our progress is exemplified by breakthroughs at the National Ignition Facility and the Joint European Torus.
X. Litaudon
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 59 | Number 3 | April 2011 | Pages 469-485
Lecture | Fourth ITER International Summer School (IISS2010) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A11690
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This lecture was given at the 4th ITER International Summer School in Austin, Texas, May 31-June 4, 2010. It reviews the recent experimental and modeling progress made to design real-time kinetic and magnetic profile control of advanced scenarios for steady-state tokamak operation. The lecture addresses four challenging issues that need to be resolved and that are open to future research activities: (a) how to operate a tokamak in a continuous manner, (b) how to control the core kinetic and magnetic profiles of tokamak plasmas, (c) how to control the fusion burn in plasmas with dominant self-generated bootstrap non-inductive current and fusion-born alpha heating, and (d) how to control simultaneously core and edge plasma parameters.