The compact tokamak was heated to a record 100 million kelvins. Free Technical Library News

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Compact tokamak warmed up to a record 100 million kelvins

27.05.2023

Researchers from the British company Tokamak Energy Ltd, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (USA), and the Institute for Energy and Climate Research (Germany) have set a plasma temperature record for a spherical tokamak.

The ST40 is compact: the size of the working chamber is no more than 80 centimeters in diameter. The ions inside the reactor were heated to over 100 million kelvins (about 100 million degrees Celsius, or 8,6 kiloelectronvolts).

"An ion temperature of over five kiloelectronvolts has never been achieved before in any spherical tokamak. They were obtained only in much larger devices with a much higher plasma heating power," the scientists explained. Their work has been published in the journal Nuclear Fusion.

Note that for small spherical tokamaks, reaching such temperatures is a very difficult task. Therefore, the fact that this was achieved on a commercial spheromak looks like a good achievement for the British.

At the same time, against the background of the most productive modern thermonuclear reactors, this indicator is not high, and the energy efficiency of the British spheromak is quite moderate.

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