Read the full article on the PPPL website. The gold standard for modelling the behaviour of fusion plasmas may have just gotten better. Mario Podestà, a staff physicist at the US Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), has updated the worldwide computer program known as TRANSP to better simulate the interaction between energetic particles and instabilities—disturbances in plasma that can halt fusion reactions.   The program's updates, reported this week in Nuclear Fusion, could lead to improved capability for predicting the effects of some types of instabilities in future facilities such as ITER.   Podestà and co-authors saw a need for better modelling techniques when they noticed that while TRANSP could accurately simulate an entire plasma discharge, the code wasn't able to represent properly the interaction between energetic particles and instabilities. The reason was that TRANSP, which PPPL developed and has regularly updated, treated all fast-moving particles within the plasma the same way. Those instabilities, however, can affect different parts of the plasma in different ways through so-called "resonant processes."   The authors first figured out how to condense information from other codes that do model the interaction accurately—albeit over short time periods—so that TRANSP could incorporate that information into its simulations. Podestà then teamed up with TRANSP developer Marina Gorelenkova at PPPL to update a TRANSP module called NUBEAM to enable it to make sense of this condensed data. "Once validated, the updated module will provide a better and more accurate way to compute the transport of energetic particles," said Podestà. "Having a more accurate description of the particle interactions with instabilities can improve the fidelity of the program's simulations."  

Is fusion the answer to our planet's energy needs? This is the question asked in the five-minute Euronews documentary filmed last week at ITER and which aired on Wednesday 29 April in 14 different languages.   ITER Director-General Bernard Bigot says "yes" and gives three reasons.   First—the availability of fusion fuels. "With hydrogen," he says, "we have a source of fuel for millions of years to come."   The second reason is that, although radioactive waste is produced by the fusion process, "the lifespan of the waste is very short—just a few hundred years, compared to millions of years in the case of fission."   And third, fusion is intrinsically safe. Even in the improbable event of an accident, the Director-General explains in the documentary, "the quantity [of radioelements] released into the environment would allow the population living around the reactor to stay where they are and resume their activities."   As for the cost of the ITER project, it must be viewed in relation to "the quantity or energy that will be produced" once fusion becomes an industrial and commercial reality.   And that, says Director-General Bigot, "justifies the initial investment."   View the five-minute documentary on the Euronews website in English, French, or 12 other languages.

​View this spectacular video of the ITER site seen from a drone's point of view. (Produced in April by the European Domestic Agency.)