Fusion Power
A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2016) | Viewed by 24057
Special Issue Editor
Interests: fusion plasmas; vacuum Arc centrifuge plasma; astrophysical and space plasmas; plasma propulsion; plasma instabilities
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Fusion power is the process that powers the Sun and the stars. If realised on Earth it promises millions of years of clean, CO2 emission free, base load power. Exploitation by toroidal magnetic confinement poses no weapon potential, and the reaction is intrinsically safe, whereby no chain reaction can be initiated. Radioactive waste is very-low level and indirect, arising from neutron activation of the first wall. With current technology, the materials of a fusion power plant could be completely recycled within about 100 years of shut-down.
Over a 50-year period of research, the fusion triple product of temperature, density, and confinement time has increased by a factor of 1000. Today’s experiments have approached unity power gain, where the input heating power is equal to the output fusion power of the reaction. The next-step fusion experiment ITER will explore the “burning plasma regime”, where the plasma heating from the confined products of fusion reaction exceeds the external heating power. The total power gain for ITER will be more than five times in near continuous operation, and approach 10–30 times for a short duration.
Research challenges for ITER and fusion span plasma physics, engineering and control, technology integration, and materials science. ITER will generate the first plasmas to be dominantly self-heated by fusion alphas, and will, hence, explore the collective behaviour of the plasma under burning conditions, including energy confinement scaling, plasma stability, and the behaviour of the plasma-edge—particularly with regard to performance limiting Edge Localised Modes. In a fusion power plant, understanding, diagnosing and modelling the plasma with limited diagnostic coverage faces a significant integrated modelling challenge. Lowering the cost of critical technologies, such as superconducting magnets, is a challenge, for which high temperature superconductors offer a great deal of promise. Finally, the material challenges for fusion power plants are significant. The first wall of a fusion power plant must be able to withstand significant neutron and heat loading, over multiple temporal and spatial scales. Over a 30-year lifetime, the entire first wall must withstand 100 displacements per atom of 14 MeV neutrons, while not capturing tritium. During plasma operation the diverter must withstand 10–100 MWm2 of heat loading.
In this Special Issue, we invite authors to submit papers addressing physics, technology, engineering, or materials science challenges presented by fusion power. The papers can either focus on a particular technical or physics aspect using existing theoretical and experimental tools, or be more comprehensive in scope and address wider-scale developments.
Dr. Matthew Hole
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- fusion power
- plasma physic
- fusion materials science
- burning plasmas
- integrated modelling
