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Fusion Science and Technology
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A year in orbit: ISS deployment tests radiation detectors for future space missions
The predawn darkness on a cool Florida night was shattered by the ignition of nine Merlin engines on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The thrust of the engines shook the ground miles away. From a distance, the rocket appeared to slowly rise above the horizon. For the cargo onboard, the launch was anything but gentle, as the ignition of liquid oxygen generated more than 1.5 million pounds of force. After the rocket had been out of sight for several minutes, the booster dramatically returned to Earth with several sonic booms in a captivating show of engineering designed to make space travel less expensive and more sustainable.
Dmitriy Vasilkov, Stanislav Grebenshchikov, Irina Grishina, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Nikolay Kharchev, Alexey Meshcheryakov, Vladimir Stepakhin
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 80 | Number 7 | October 2024 | Pages 826-832
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2201165
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The results of experiments on high-temperature plasma confinement in a quasi-stationary fusion facility are presented. The results were obtained on the L-2M stellarator in which superposition of magnetic fields with three-dimensional spatial symmetry is created with the help of external windings. The plasma was created and heated using microwave pulses with a record specific power of 2 to 4 MW/m3. Under these conditions, spontaneous transition processes were observed in a plasma stable with respect to large-scale instabilities, leading to an abrupt increase in energy. High thermal loads on the wall of the vacuum chamber are observed in the area of the helical separatrix, which leads to an increase in the penetration of impurities into the plasma. Plasma energy and confinement time correspond to L-2M single-machine scaling at lower powers while at specific powers above 3 MW/m3, confinement time decreases due to the accumulation of impurities. The research results can be used to develop fusion energy facilities or to simulate astrophysical phenomena.