Français

Oxford University Tokamak Energy Company develops laser technology for fusion power plants

518
2024-03-14 15:00:07
Voir la traduction

Tokamak Energy is currently developing a new laser measurement technology for controlling extreme conditions inside fusion power plants.
The laser based dispersion interferometer system is being tested at the company's headquarters in Oxford and will be installed on its world record breaking fusion machine ST40 later this year.

Clean, safe, and renewable nuclear fusion power generation occurs inside the tokamak, which is a device that heats plasma to over 100 million degrees Celsius.
A professional laser system will closely and accurately measure the hydrogen fuel contained inside, ensuring that the burning plasma remains stable and maintains density.

Dr. Tadas Pyragius, a plasma physicist at Tokamak Energy, explained, "Measuring plasma density is key to our understanding and control of fusion fuels and future efficient power plant operations.".
The interaction between laser beams emitted by plasma and electrons tells us the density of fuel, which is crucial for sustained fusion conditions and providing safe and reliable energy to the power grid.

"The extreme conditions caused by the nuclear fusion process mean that we now need to improve laser based diagnostic technology to advance our mission of providing clean, safe, and affordable nuclear fusion energy in the 2030's."
The ST40 of Tokamak Energy is the first private nuclear fusion machine to achieve a plasma ion temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius, which is the threshold for commercial nuclear fusion.

Since achieving a breakthrough in 2022, the machine has undergone a series of hardware upgrades, including new power supplies and diagnostic systems.
Last year, the company successfully debugged the Thomson scattering laser diagnostic instrument for ST40 to provide detailed readings of plasma temperature and density at specific locations.
After further upgrades and maintenance, the machine will be put back into use later in 2024.

Source: Laser Net

Recommandations associées
  • Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics has made progress in the interdisciplinary field of photochemistry and photophysics

    Recently, the team led by Wu Kaifeng, a researcher at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Zhu Jingyi, an associate researcher, has made progress in the interdisciplinary field of photochemistry and photophysics. The team directly observed the quantum coherence properties of hybrid free radical pairs composed of quantum dots and organic molecules, achieving ef...

    01-09
    Voir la traduction
  • STREAMLIGHT Upgrade TLR RM Light with Red or Green Laser

    Streamlight, a leading supplier of high-performance lighting and weapon lights/laser aiming equipment, has launched upgraded models of its TLR RM 1 and TLR RM 2 series of lights, each now equipped with an HPL face cap, providing ultra bright beams of up to 1000 lumens and an extended range of up to 22000 candela.The popular TLR RM 1 and TLR RM 2 models are equipped with red or green lasers, both o...

    2024-02-23
    Voir la traduction
  • Tower and Fortsense have announced the launch of their highly advanced 3D imager for LiDAR

    Recently, Gaota Semiconductor announced the successful development of an advanced 3D imager based on dToF technology for LiDAR applications. The newly developed product FL6031 is based on Tower's 65nm Stacked BSI CIS platform and has pixel level hybrid bonding function. It is the first in a series of products aimed at meeting the needs of numerous deep sensing applications in the automotive, consu...

    2023-09-14
    Voir la traduction
  • The Japanese research team has manufactured a vertical deep ultraviolet emitting semiconductor laser device based on AlGaN, which is expected to be applied in fields such as laser processing

    Recently, a Japanese research team has developed a vertical deep ultraviolet emitting semiconductor laser device based on AlGaN, which is expected to be applied in laser processing, biotechnology, and medical fields.As is well known, ultraviolet (UV) is an electromagnetic wave with a wavelength range of 100 to 380nm. These wavelengths can be divided into three regions: UV-A (315-380 nm), UV-B (280...

    2023-10-23
    Voir la traduction
  • X photon 3D nanolithography

    Virtual and Physical Prototypes: X-ray laser direct writing 3D nanolithography.Multi-photon polymerization (MPP), also known as 3D nanoprinting, has been investigated using wavelength-tunable femtosecond lasers. At a fixed pulse width of 100 fs, any spectral color in the range of 500nm to 1200nm can be used, which reveals the interaction of more subtle photophysical mechanisms than two-photon phot...

    2023-09-11
    Voir la traduction