Thanks to new research, it has been found that the law for future fusion reactions in tokamaks is incorrect.
The maximum hydrogen fuel density has been determined by the physicists from the Swiss Plasma Center.
The operation of the massive ITER tokamak being built in southern France will be affected by the discovery that fusion reactors can work with hydrogen plasma densities that are much higher than the Greenwald Limit.
Ricci told Live Science that the increase is on the order of a factor of two.
Ricci is one of the leaders on the research project, which combined theoretical work with the results of about a year of experiments at three different fusion reactor across Europe.
He is one of the authors of a study about the discovery published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
One day, the donut-shaped tokamaks could be used to generate electricity for power grids.
Nuclear fusion could generate even more energy by joining very small nuclei together, which is why scientists have worked for more than 50 years to make it a reality.
The fusion process creates less radioactive waste and is easier to obtain than fission.
The same process powers stars like the Sun, which is why controlled fusion is similar to a star in a jar.
The temperature inside the TCV tokamak can be more than 120 million degrees Fahrenheit, which is 10 times the temperature of the fusion core of the Sun.
Several fusion power projects are at an advanced stage, and some researchers think the first tokamak to generate electricity for the grid could be working by 2030.
More than 30 governments around the world are funding the ITER tokamak, which is due to produce its first experimental plasmas in 25 years.
ITER isn't designed to generate electricity, but tokamaks based on it are being designed and could be working by 2051.
The Greenwald Limit is named after a MIT physicist who determined the limit in 1988.
When they increased the fuel density past a certain point, researchers were trying to find out why their fusion plasmas became uncontrollable.
The rule of fusion research has been based on the Greenwald Limit for more than 30 years. It is a guiding principle of the ITER design.
He said that the new study expands on the theory that Greenwald used to derive his limit, resulting in a much higher fuel density limit that will increase the capacity of ITER and impact the designs of the DEMO reactor that come after it.
He said that the key was the discovery that a plasma can sustain a greater fuel density as the power output of a fusion reaction increases.
Ricci said it was not possible to know how much power tokamaks would get from a large increase in fuel density.
He said that it makes fusion conditions easier to achieve.
The article was published by Live Science. The original article can be found here.
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