Preventing a Tokamak from Overheating

Preventing a Tokamak from OverheatingFusion reactor experiments in Switzerland have demonstrated a new way to remove unwanted heat from a magnetically confined plasma. By Charles DayA mong the most enduring designs for a fusion reactor is the tokamak, which uses a doughnut-shaped magnetic field to trap burning plasma.But some of the plasma still interacts with the reactor wall, which can cause severe damage.Now, on one of the key European tokamak experiments, Kenneth Lee of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and his collaborators have demonstrated a new and potentially efficient way to shed excess heat [1].