Their experiment, called MUSE, relies on 3D-printed and off-the-shelf parts.
Even once that long-sought goal is reached, scaling the technology andmaking it commercially viable is its own beast.
This technique allows us to test new plasma confinement ideas quickly and build new devices easily.
MUSE, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory’s new stellarator.Photo: Michael Livingston / PPPL Communications Department
Permanent magnets dont need electric current to generate their magnet fields and can be purchased off-the-shelf.
The MUSE experiment stuck such magnets onto a 3-D printed shell.
Thats the property that makes this technique work.
Left: permanent magnets in MUSE. Right: the stellarator’s 3-D printed shell.Photo:Xu Chu / PPPL and Michael Livingston / PPPL Communications Department
However, that accolade neglects to account for the wall power necessary to induce the reaction.
In other words, theres still a long, long road ahead.
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