Artificial Intelligence and Fusion Reactors

Scientists in China achieved a major breakthrough that could help unlock nearly unlimited clean energy via fusion.


They hope to do so by solving one of the biggest challenges for fusion reactors, as Interesting Engineering explained. That is the puzzle of measuring the ultrahot plasma, which creates fusion reactions quickly and accurately in real time. Having faster data will help optimize fusion performance and maintain reactor stability.


The research team from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science used neural networks powered by artificial intelligence. Neural networks leverage pattern recognition and advanced calculation abilities that allow them to quickly generate measurements, per Interesting Engineering.


The scientists enlisted two neural network models to measure two critical parameters of the plasma: ion temperature and rotation velocity. The results were impressive and bode well for future applications to harness fusion power.          READ MORE...

Fusion Reaction Energy

Magnetic fusion reactors contain super hot plasma in a donut-shaped container called a tokamak.

Nuclear fusion hit a milestone thanks to better reactor walls – this engineering advance is building toward reactors of the future.

Scientists in England have set a new record for the quantity of energy generated during a controlled, sustained fusion reaction. The creation of 59 megajoules of energy over five seconds at the Joint European Torus – or JET – experiment in England has been dubbed a “breakthrough” by certain media organizations and has sparked physicists’ interest. However, a frequent saying about fusion energy generation is that it is “always 20 years away.”

We are a nuclear physicist and a nuclear engineer working to develop controlled nuclear fusion for power generation.

The JET finding represents significant progress in the understanding of fusion physics. But, perhaps more crucially, it demonstrates that the new materials used to create the fusion reactor’s inner walls performed as expected. The fact that the new wall structure functioned so well sets these findings apart from past milestones and brings magnetic fusion closer to reality.

Fusing particles together
Nuclear fusion is the merging of two atomic nuclei into one compound nucleus. This nucleus then breaks apart and releases energy in the form of new atoms and particles that speed away from the reaction. A fusion power plant would capture the escaping particles and use their energy to generate electricity.

There are a few different ways to safely control fusion on Earth. Our research focuses on the approach taken by JET – using powerful magnetic fields to confine atoms until they are heated to a high enough temperature for them to fuse.

The fuel for current and future reactors are two different isotopes of hydrogen – meaning they have the one proton, but different numbers of neutrons – called deuterium and tritium. Normal hydrogen has one proton and no neutrons in its nucleus. Deuterium has one proton and one neutron while tritium has one proton and two neutrons.  READ MORE...

Practical Fusion Reactors

Matthew Wolford inspects the Electra argon- fluoride (ArF) laser US Navy/Jonathan Steffen


The US Naval Research Laboratory (AFL) is developing an Argon Fluoride (ArF) laser that may one day make fusion power a practical commercial technology. The wide-bandwidth ultraviolet laser is designed to have the shortest laser wavelength that can scale up to power a self-sustaining fusion reaction.


To call fusion energy a game changing technology is like saying that fire might one day find a practical application. In fact, the ability to generate clean energy from hydrogen in any desired quantity over any foreseeable timescale would fundamentally alter civilization in ways we can't imagine.

The problem is fusion power is like the proverbial rabbit pie recipe that begins with, "First, catch your rabbit." Though we can recreate the conditions found inside the Sun to produce fusion reactions on Earth, these are relegated to hydrogen bombs and laboratory experiments where it takes more energy to create the fusion reaction than we can get out of it – though recent experiments are getting much closer to turning that around.

The Nike laser lens array focusing 44 krypton-fluoride (KrF) laser beams onto targets NRL

The goal for the past 75 years has been to produce temperatures in excess of 100 million degrees C (180 million degrees F) and the pressure needed to ignite the fusion reaction and generate enough surplus energy to sustain it. That in itself would be a major achievement, but the technology also has to be able to sustain the reaction indefinitely, while also being cheap enough and the reactor small enough for it to be practical.  READ MORE...