Nuclear fusion power plants could one day provide a sustainable solution to our energy problems. So far, however, no commercial nuclear fusion reactor is in operation. One of the main obstacles on the way are plasma instabilities, so-called Type-I ELMs, which arise near the reactor wall and can damage it.
The fusion research team at TU Wien, in cooperation with the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Garching, has now been able to show that it is possible to avoid this problem. The idea behind this is to accept many small instabilities instead of large potentially destructive instabilities. These small instabilities pose no danger to the reactor wall. This approach can be compared to a pot with a lid in which the water begins to boil. "If pressure keeps building up, the lid will lift and rattle heavily due to the escaping steam. But if you tilt the lid slightly, then steam can continuously escape, and the lid remains stable and doesn't rattle", explains first author Georg Harrer. For more information about the results click here.
The results have now been published in the journal "Physical Review Letters" as Editors' Suggestion.