Scientists at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory have used the Summit supercomputer to simulate a potential solution to the problem of runaway electrons in fusion reactors. These high-energy electrons can damage reactor walls and disrupt the fusion process. Chang Liu, the lead author of the study, explains, “These electrons can possess as much as 100,000 times more energy than the bulk electron population, forming a beam that can cause significant damage.”
The simulations showed that Alfvén waves, which are ripple-like fluctuations in the magnetic field, can scatter runaway electrons.
This scattering prevents the electrons from forming a damaging beam. “It’s like clearing snow from the mountain slope to prevent an avalanche,” Liu remarked, highlighting the importance of this phenomenon in potentially mitigating the damage caused by runaway electrons. The Summit supercomputer, capable of more than 200 quadrillion calculations per second, enabled these groundbreaking simulations.
Preventing fusion reactor wall damage
“These simulations would have taken at least 30 times longer on a regular CPU-based machine,” noted Liu. The findings from these simulations align with the results of limited experiments at the DOE’s D-III National Fusion Facility.
The team plans to incorporate additional scenarios into their models and work with experts at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility to optimize their code for Frontier, Summit’s successor. “With Frontier’s computational power and huge memory, we can simulate the whole process in a much more realistic way,” Liu said. The team hopes that this research will lead to significant progress in achieving clean nuclear energy through fusion.
These findings are deemed crucial in paving the way forward, as numerous challenges need to be addressed for the successful realization of nuclear fusion.
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