Harnessing the fusion power of the sun and stars to fight off climate change
PPPL researchers have found a way to build powerful magnets smaller than before, aiding the design and construction of machines that could help the world harness the power of the sun to create electricity without producing greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.
The scientists found a way to build high-temperature superconducting magnets that are made of material that conducts electricity with little or no resistance at temperatures warmer than before. Such powerful magnets would more easily fit within the tight space inside spherical tokamaks, which are shaped more like a cored apple than the doughnut-like shape of conventional tokamaks, and are being explored as a possible design for future fusion power plants.
Since the magnets could be positioned apart from other machinery in the spherical tokamak's central cavity to corral the hot plasma that fuels fusion reactions, researchers could repair them without having to take anything else apart. "To do this, you need a magnet with a stronger magnetic field and a smaller size than current magnets," said Yuhu Zhai, a principal engineer at PPPL and lead author of a paper reporting the results in IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity. "The only way you do that is with superconducting wires, and that's what we've done."
Fusion, the power that drives the sun and stars, combines light elements in the form of plasma -- the hot, charged state of matter composed of free electrons and atomic nuclei -- that generates massive amounts of energy. Scientists are seeking to replicate fusion on Earth for a virtually inexhaustible supply of safe and clean power to generate electricity.
High-temperature superconducting magnets have several advantages over copper magnets. They
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