From confinement approaches to heating, magnets, fuel and materials: explore principles, component roles and development stages, then the companies and projects behind them. Understand the industrial context as well as the technology.
Sustaining laser fusion experiments requires tracking optical components, limiting damage growth and repairing parts for reuse. Public NIF material shows how inspection, machining and process management connect. Maintenance experience at a research facility must be distinguished from the requirements of future power plants.
JT-60SA has produced 160 cubic metres of plasma. Its size helps researchers learn how to operate future fusion reactors. Follow real photographs of the vacuum vessel, superconducting magnets, heating equipment, and heat-receiving walls, distinguishing its world record from design goals.
Technical explainer: accelerate particles as ions, cross the magnetic field as neutral atoms, and transfer heat inside the plasma. Real photographs of ELISE and MITICA guide an explanation of NBI and why negative ions are needed, distinguishing test achievements from future validation.
Why add cold hydrogen when the aim is to keep plasma hot? Fueling in magnetic confinement is explained through pellet disappearance, density profiles, and synchronization with heating. Read the advances and unresolved questions in W7-X and Heliotron J research.
An in-depth feature explaining Q-DEMO’s staged power-generation demonstrations through the connections between heat, fuel, materials, maintenance, and safety—from technology inherited from JT-60SA and ITER to costs, implementing organizations, and deliverables companies can provide.
A closer look at the October 8 joint announcement from General Fusion and UKAEA. LM26's slow compression, electron and ion temperatures, and optical measurements through limited viewing access show what has been demonstrated and what remains a target.
A theoretical study presented by PPPL on October 5 examines the order of raising temperature and density, and what wall impurities and heat losses mean for design. It is a proposal for further testing, not experimental demonstration of ignition.
From QST’s full name and origins to plasma research at Naka, Japan’s ITER Domestic Agency, and reactor engineering and materials research at Rokkasho: how two sites contribute to demonstration-reactor development, viewed through the role of a public research institution.
The Sun and fusion reactors share the principle of obtaining energy from light atomic nuclei. Differences in fuel, confinement and the route to electricity explain what the metaphor “artificial sun” does—and does not—mean.
High temperature alone does not determine fusion performance. Connecting the triple product of temperature, density and energy-confinement time with measurement and control clarifies how to read record-setting numbers.
Plasma is not confined to ultrahot fusion. Following electrons and ions through lightning, fluorescent lamps and semiconductor processing helps distinguish plasma from fusion.
In 1969, a British team used lasers to verify Soviet T-3 results. Revisit a turning point in fusion research and consider measurement targets, methods and repeatability when assessing corporate demonstrations.
