Science

The Key issues for Fusion Energy

The science of fusion is both complex and profound. It involves challenges in a wide variety of areas, and requires fundamental development of theories and experimental techniques if fusion is to meet its goal of practical and affordable energy generation. We believe that magnetically confined fusion is the only energy source with the potential for mainstream energy generation, that is free of Greenhouse gas production, free of long-lived highly active nuclear waste, and has virtually limitless supplies of fuel readily available.

The key challenge to developing fusion as a realistic energy source is to obtain plasmas with high densities and temperatures to cause deuterium and tritium nuclei to fuse sufficiently frequently. This requires temperatures of ~100 million degrees Centigrade - several times hotter than the centre of the sun, and is achieved by confining particles (and therefore heat) magnetically.

Goals are to ensure:

• the plasma configuration is stable and does not dissipate its stored energy
• techniques are developed to control instabilities and mitigate the high stresses and thermal loads associated with events and terminations of the plasma
• transport is minimised to ensure heat is retained in the plasma to keep the fusion going
• scenarios are developed without inductive current drive, enabling continuous operation
• diagnostic and control techniques can measure and keep the plasma in the optimum configuration
• heating and current drive systems are developed as the principal tools to achieve this
• materials can handle the high thermal and neutron loads expected in a power plant
• the effects of fusion products (energetic helium nuclei) on the plasma performance are understood and controlled

The research programme is executed on the European JET experiment (located at Culham), as well as UKAEA's MAST and COMPASS-D devices. For more details of the underlying science and research programme behind fusion, see our general web pages.

The Culham programme undertakes leading edge research in all the principal fields required to develop fusion for practical energy generation. Scientific work follows the following themes:

• Experiments to explore the key physics mechanisms and control
• Diagnostic techniques and their development
• Heating and current drive systems, including radio frequency physics
• Theory and computational modelling to understand underlying processes and predict behaviour

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