US claims breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion Tech, fulfilling the dream of Harnessing Unlimited Energy

On Friday, researchers at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) made a breakthrough in nuclear fusion technology that can achieve the goal of harnessing unlimited energy.

According to the Eurasian Times, this latest development will make it easier to initiate and maintain nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion is regarded as the “holy grail” of energy sources, and scientists have been working furiously to understand the mechanism that would enable them to harness it.

Fusion, the energy that drives the sun and other stars, combines light elements to create hot, charged particles called plasma, producing enormous amounts of energy.

The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has discovered that including the physical property of resistivity into an updated mathematical model can lead to a more effective design for tokamaks, the doughnut-shaped fusion facility. The doughnut-shaped fusion facility uses charged particles to create nuclear fusion.

Nathaniel Ferraro, a PPPL physicist and one of the researchers said, “Resistivity is the property of any substance that inhibits the flow of electricity.”

“It’s kind of like the viscosity of a fluid, which inhibits things moving through it. For example, a stone will move more slowly through molasses than water, and more slowly through water than through air,” he further said as per Eurasian Times.

“According to the latest research, resistivity can also lead to instability in the plasma edge, dramatically causing temperatures and pressures to rise. Researchers can create more stable fusion facility systems by incorporating resistivity into models that forecast how plasma will behave,” a source as per Eurasian Times.