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?The sun pours out an amazing amount of energy. Only a small fraction of the sun's total output reaches us, yet it powers our entire ecosystem. All the plants and animals on planet earth rely on this warmth for light and food. Surprisingly, though, the sun is not a terribly good fusion reactor, for its size. In terms of power output per volume, JET at its best is over 700 times better, and ºÚÁÏÉçapp will be a staggering 2,150 times more efficient fusion reactor than the sun.

ºÚÁÏÉçapp's plasma volume will be 840 cubic metres, which with the target of 500 megawatt output power equates to nearly 600 kilowatts per cubic metre¡ªthe most efficient fusion reactor not only on Earth, but in the whole solar system!

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?At first, it's hard to know whether to take the company known as  (PSS) seriously. For one thing, the PSS offices, a few rooms in a nondescript building in nondescript Plainsboro, N.J., right above the Sugar and Sunshine Bakery, don't exactly suggest the imminent conquest of the final frontier. The company's ambitions, by contrast, certainly do ¡ª but those sound so crazy that you have to wonder if they're serious. This team of a half-dozen or so scientists and engineers is determined to send human beings to Mars, launch robotic probes to the outer solar system, send missions to Alpha Centauri and more, and do it all with rockets powered by nuclear fusion.

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?Welcome to the premiere issue of "Quest," the annual magazine of the US Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). We are pleased to provide this news of our strides in advancing research into fusion energy and plasma science¡ªtwo topics of vital interest to the United States and the world.

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?Measuring the number of neutrons produced is one of the most basic yardsticks of success of a fusion experiment, yet it's surprisingly tricky to ensure your neutron detectors are calibrated correctly, says the leader of the team that has just finished calibrating JET's neutron diagnostic systems.

"The physics was only a part of the activity," says Project Leader, Dr Brian Syme. "Obtaining the neutron source, the safety issues and all the engineering developments associated with source handling were three quarters of the project!"

The process sounds simple enough ¡ª simply hold a radioactive source that produces a known number of neutrons at a set of known locations in the torus. From the detector counts you have an answer. However to get to that moment took the team three years of careful planning, including intensive neutronics calculations by colleagues in the Slovenian and Swedish associations.

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?Chinese and American scientists have successfully conducted their first joint test of two fusion reactors.

The experiment on the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), a fusion energy reactor built by Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the DIII-D, a tokamak machine developed by General Atomics in the USA, found that it's feasible for a tokamak fully relying on bootstrap current and non-induced current to run in a high-performance and steady way, Anhui Daily reported, citing the Hefei-based institute.   Read more

 

?Follow this link for a with Stephen O. Dean, a 50-year fusion veteran and the founder of Fusion Power Associates.

?Science is awesome. Physics is awesome! Here is a photo collection of huge and fantastical scientific experiments and machinery, including the European tokamak, JET.

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?VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland's research results indicate that joint planning of the reactor structure and remote maintenance system can significantly improve the utilisation rates of future fusion power plants. Designing a reactor with the simplest structure possible can reduce maintenance periods, as well as building expenses and overhead costs. Since 1995, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has participated in two international projects aimed at building a full-scale fusion reactor and commercialising fusion as an energy source.

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?Fission-ignited fusion systems have been operational ¡ª in weapon form ¡ª since the 1950s. Leveraging insights gained from the weapons physics program, a Z-Pinch device could be used to ignite a thermonuclear deuterium trigger. The fusion neutrons will induce fission reaction in a surrounding uranium or thorium liner, releasing sufficient energy to further confine and heat the fusion plasma.

The combined energy release from fission and fusion would then be directed using a magnetic nozzle to produce useful thrust. This type of concept could provide the efficiency of open cycle fusion propulsion devices with the relative small size and simplicity of fission systems; and would provide a radical improvement in our ability to explore destinations across the solar system and beyond. This proposal is modified version of last year's proposal - addressing issues raised during that evaluation.

Read more and see the video on the  website.