MIT Energy Fellow Richard Ibekwe is attracted to the challenges of fusion research."There are few problems as hard to solve or that might have as profound a potential positive impact on our planet and the whole of humanity,” he says.
MIT’s Erica Salazar shows that faster detection of thermal shifts can prevent disruptive quench events in the HTS magnets used in tokamak fusion devices.
Postdoctoral associate David Fischer's research focuses on observing ways irradiation damages the thin high-temperature superconductor tapes in the design of ARC, a fusion pilot plant concept.
A team led by MIT’s PSFC and MIT spinout company Commonwealth Fusion Systems, has developed and extensively tested an HTS cable technology that can be scaled and engineered into the high-performance magnets.
This series of papers provides a high level of confidence in the plasma physics and the performance predictions for SPARC. No unexpected impediments or surprises have shown up, and the remaining challenges appear to be manageable. This sets a solid basis for the device’s operation once constructed, according to Martin Greenwald, Deputy Director of MIT PSFC.
Research engineer Willy Burke had never heard of a “fusor.” Now he has guided the successful creation of 14 fusors, in the process inaugurating a new maker space sponsored by the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, the PSFC, and MIT’s office of Environmental Health and Safety.
Nathan Howard, research scientist at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, has won the 2019 Nuclear Fusion Award for a paper that explains heat losses due to turbulence in the core of magnetically confined fusion plasmas.
As a graduate student Pablo Rodriguez-Fernandez (PhD’19) became intrigued by a fusion research mystery that had remained unsolved for 20 years. His novel observations and subsequent modeling helped provide the answer, earning him the 2019 Del Favero Thesis Prize.
October provided the PSFC with consecutive opportunities to educate students and the general public about the science and technology that support plasma fusion research: MIT Energy Night at the MIT Museum, and the American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics (APS-DPP) Plasma Science Expo in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The future of fusion energy is right around the corner. You'll find it off Massachusetts Avenue, on Albany Street in Cambridge. It's on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in an old, low-rise, brown brick building once owned by Nabisco.
Brandon Sorbom and Commonwealth Fusion Systems break new ground in energy technology and business models in pursuit of climate-friendly power generation
By developing an electromagnetic system using high-temperature superconductors to insulate part of the fusion process, Sorbom’s breakthrough could make fusion power plant designs dramatically cheaper to build.
On April 4 the Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) joined Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) at the MIT Energy Conference Tech Showcase, to demonstrate the magnetic and plasma properties that underlie fusion technologies.
Fusion power has been a tantalizing prospect for decades, promising a source of endless carbon-free energy for the world. MIT’s PSFC, in collaboration MIT alumni-led company CFS, is poised to use materials breakthroughs to build the first fusion device that generates more energy than it consumes, bringing commercial fusion energy within practical reach in the near future.