Physicists just rewrote a foundational rule for nuclear fusion reactors that could unleash twice the power

(Image by Wolfgang Stemme from Pixabay)

(LIVE SCIENCE) – Future fusion reactions inside tokamaks could produce much more energy than previously thought, thanks to groundbreaking new research that found a foundational law for such reactors was wrong.

The research, led by physicists from the Swiss Plasma Center at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EFPL), 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 discovery that fusion reactors can actually work with hydrogen plasma densities that are much higher than the Greenwald Limit they are built for will influence the operation of the massive ITER tokamak being built in southern France, and greatly affect the designs of ITER's successors, called the Demonstration power plant (DEMO) fusion reactors, said physicist Paolo Ricci at the Swiss Plasma Center.

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