A stellarator is a plasma device that relies primarily on external magnets to confine a plasma. In the future, scientists researching magnetic confinement fusion aim to use stellarator devices as a vessel for nuclear fusion reactions. The name refers to the possibility of harnessing the power source of the stars, including the sun. It is one of the earliest fusion power devices, along with the z-pinch and magnetic mirror.
A tokamak is a device which uses a powerful magnetic field to confine plasma in the shape of a torus. The tokamak is one of several types of magnetic confinement devices being developed to produce controlled thermonuclear fusion power. As of 2021, it is the leading candidate for a practical fusion reactor.
A magnetic mirror, known as a magnetic trap in Russia and briefly as a pyrotron in the US, is a type of magnetic confinement device used in fusion power to trap high temperature plasma using magnetic fields. The mirror was one of the earliest major approaches to fusion power, along with the stellarator and z-pinch machines.
Fusion power is an experimental form of power generation that generates electricity by using nuclear fusion reactions. In a fusion process, two atomic nuclei combine to form a heavier nucleus, while releasing energy. Devices that produce energy in this way are known as fusion reactors.
This timeline of nuclear fusion is an incomplete chronological summary of significant events in the study and use of nuclear fusion.
Magnetic confinement fusion is an approach to generate thermonuclear fusion power that uses magnetic fields to confine fusion fuel in the form of a plasma. Magnetic confinement is one of two major branches of fusion energy research, along with inertial confinement fusion. The magnetic approach began in the 1940s and absorbed the majority of subsequent development.
A spheromak is an arrangement of plasma formed into a toroidal shape similar to a smoke ring. The spheromak contains large internal electric currents and their associated magnetic fields arranged so the magnetohydrodynamic forces within the spheromak are nearly balanced, resulting in long-lived (microsecond) confinement times without external fields. Spheromaks belong to a type of plasma configuration referred to as the compact toroids.
DIII-D is a tokamak that has been operated since the late 1980s by General Atomics (GA) in San Diego, USA, for the U.S. Department of Energy. The DIII-D National Fusion Facility is part of the ongoing effort to achieve magnetically confined fusion. The mission of the DIII-D Research Program is to establish the scientific basis for the optimization of the tokamak approach to fusion energy production.
The National Compact Stellarator Experiment, NCSX in short, was a magnetic fusion energy experiment based on the stellarator design being constructed at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL).
The Sustained Spheromak Physics Experiment (SSPX) is a program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States established to investigate spheromak plasma.
Richard Freeman Post was an American physicist notable for his work in nuclear fusion, plasma physics, magnetic mirrors, magnetic levitation, magnetic bearing design and direct energy conversion.
The Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) is the UK's national laboratory for fusion research. It is located at the Culham Science Centre, near Culham, Oxfordshire, and is the site of the Joint European Torus (JET), Mega Ampere Spherical Tokamak (MAST) and the now closed Small Tight Aspect Ratio Tokamak (START).
The Astron is a type of fusion power device pioneered by Nicholas Christofilos and built at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory during the 1960s and 70s. Astron used a unique confinement system that avoided several of the problems found in contemporary designs like the stellarator and magnetic mirror. Development was greatly slowed by a series of changes to the design that were made with limited oversight, leading to a review committee being set up to oversee further development. The Astron was unable to meet the performance goals set for it by the committee; funding was cancelled in 1972 and development wound down in 1973. Work on similar designs appears to have demonstrated a theoretical problem in the very design that suggests it could never be used for practical generation.
The Tandem Mirror Experiment was a magnetic mirror machine operated from 1979 to 1987 at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It was the first large-scale machine to test the "tandem mirror" concept in which two mirrors trapped a large volume of plasma between them in an effort to increase the efficiency of the reactor.
LIFE, short for Laser Inertial Fusion Energy, was a fusion energy effort run at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory between 2008 and 2013. LIFE aimed to develop the technologies necessary to convert the laser-driven inertial confinement fusion concept being developed in the National Ignition Facility (NIF) into a practical commercial power plant, a concept known generally as inertial fusion energy (IFE). LIFE used the same basic concepts as NIF, but aimed to lower costs using mass-produced fuel elements, simplified maintenance, and diode lasers with higher electrical efficiency.
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Ryutov is a Russian theoretical plasma physicist.
John D. Lindl is an American physicist who specializes in inertial confinement fusion (ICF). He is currently the Chief Scientist of the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
The history of nuclear fusion began early in the 20th century as an inquiry into how stars powered themselves and expanded to incorporate a broad inquiry into the nature of matter and energy, as potential applications expanded to include warfare, energy production and rocket propulsion.
