Science Alert May 26, 2022
The research led by physicists from the Swiss Plasma Center has determined that the maximum hydrogen fuel density is about twice the Greenwald Limit – an estimate derived from experiments more than 30 years ago. The exact value depends on the power. But as a rough estimate, the increase is on the order of a factor of two in ITER. Although scientists had long suspected the Greenwald Limit could be improved upon, it has been a foundational rule of fusion research for more than 30 years, a guiding principle of the ITER design. The key was the discovery that a plasma can sustain a greater fuel density as the power output of a fusion reaction increases. Research shows greater fuel density will make fusion reactors easier to operate, safe, and sustainable fusion conditions easier to achieve…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
TCV tokamak at Lausanne in Switzerland. (Curdin Wüthrich/SPC/EPFL)