To create a practical fusion power system, scientists must understand how plasma fuel interacts with its surroundings. In a fusion reactor, plasma is superheated, causing some atoms to collide with the reactor’s walls and become embedded. Measuring how much fuel gets trapped is essential for maintaining efficiency and minimizing radioactive buildup.
“The less fuel is trapped in the wall, the less radioactive material builds up,” said Shota Abe, a staff research physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL).
Abe leads a new study published in Nuclear Materials and Energy, which examines how much deuterium — one of the most promising fusion fuels — gets absorbed into the boron-coated graphite walls of a tokamak, a doughnut-shaped fusion vessel. Boron is commonly used in experimental fusion systems to reduce plasma impurities, but its effect on fuel retention remains unclear. Researchers are working to determine how much deuterium leaves the plasma and embeds into the reactor walls, which could have significant implications for future fusion reactors.
“Understanding how boron coatings can interact with deuterium can help us improve materials for future fusion power plants, such as ITER,” said Abe. ITER is the multinational facility under assembly in France, which will study plasma that can heat itself and sustain its own fusion reactions.
To read more, click here.