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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.
Keisuke Fujii, Motoshi Goto, Shigeru Morita, Masahiro Hasuo
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 69 | Number 2 | April 2016 | Pages 514-525
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST15-168
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Balmer-α line profile observed from high-temperature magnetized plasmas can be interpreted as the sum of narrow and broad components corresponding to the emission from atoms generated in edge and core regions, respectively. The inversion of this line profile reveals the atom density distribution in the plasma. The inversion method we reported in previous studies [Nucl. Fusion, 55, 063029 (2015) and Rev. Sci. Instrum., 85, 023502 (2014)] requires a regularization parameter that must be manually tuned to avoid overfitting. Therefore, it has been difficult to evaluate the uncertainty of the results. Here, we report an improved method based on Bayesian statistics in which the regularization parameter is interpreted as an adjustable parameter, which is then marginalized for the uncertainty evaluation. Two types of prior distributions were examined. The first is an empirical prior that assumes the smoothness of a solution, and the second is based on a diffusion model of hydrogen atoms. We found the use of the diffusion model as prior information to have an advantage with respect to the accuracy of the core region atom density.