What’s New

Using a frozen hydrogen machine gun installed on the DIII-D magnetic fusion plasma experiment in San Diego, researchers were able to fire millimetre-sized pellets of frozen hydrogen into the edge of a 20 million degree fusion plasma, dramatically reducing the size of periodic edge disturbances called ELMs, which are similar to solar flares at the surface of the sun.

 

"The rapid-fire frozen-pellet machine gun technology actually triggers many smaller disturbances, effectively short-circuiting the plasma's natural tendency to have less requent, but much larger outbursts," said Dr. Larry Baylor of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where the pellet gun was designed and built.