Notable Projects: Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Tokamak Energy, ITER, CTFusion, JET The sheer scale, complexity and tolerances required to achieve reliable confinement are also a challenge. Magnetic confinement of hot plasma ions does nothing to remove the large number of neutral atoms within the reactor, all of which rob the plasma of fusion energy making net energy generation more difficult. Imperfections in the magnetic confinement lead to large scale disruptions in the plasma, loss of confinement and serious damage to the reactor. Recently, new high-temperature superconducting materials such as yttrium-barium-coper oxides are promising to make magnetic confinement more feasible.Ĭhallenges: Tokamaks require extremely strong magnets in the 3 to 20 Tesla range which also require high tolerances. Despite being proposed in 1985, ITER is not projected to be operational until 2035. History: More than 200 tokamaks have been built since the 1960’s, the largest and most ambitious of which is the ~$25 Billion ITER project still being constructed in southern France. The word “tokamak” is a Russian acronym for “toroidal chamber with axial magnetic field”. In a Tokamak, powerful electromagnetic fields combine with electrical current flowing directly through the plasma to heat and confine the toroidal plasma. High-Level Concept: The most famous embodiment of an MCF device is a tokamak.
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