Colorimetry in Nuclear Fusion Research

Colorimetry is a unique technique among research fields. The technique is also utilized in nuclear fusion research. The motivation is to evaluate the wide range of distribution of the deposition layer on the surface of the vacuum vessel. The deposition layer affects the control of fuel particles. Therefore, the result from colorimetry can contribute to the study of particle control in fusion plasma. In a particle control study, global particle balance analysis is usually conducted. Also, long-term samples irradiated by plasma have been analyzed. Colorimetry has the role of a bridge between these analyses. In this chapter, a demonstration of colorimetry in fusion devices is introduced.

Update on the Scientific Status of the Plasma Focus

This paper is a sequel to the 1998 review paper “Scientific status of the Dense Plasma Focus” with 16 authors belonging to 16 nations, whose initiative led to the establishment of the International Center for Dense Magnetized Plasmas (ICDMP) in the year 2000. Its focus is on understanding the principal defining characteristic features of the plasma focus in the light of the developments that have taken place in the last 20 years, in terms of new facilities, diagnostics, models, and insights. Although it is too soon to proclaim with certainty what the plasma focus phenomenon is, the results available to date conclusively indicate what it is demonstrably not. The review looks at the experimental data, cross-correlated across multiple diagnostics and multiple devices, to delineate the contours of an emerging narrative that is fascinatingly different from the standard narrative, which has guided the consensus in the plasma focus community for several decades, without invalidating it. It raises a question mark over the Fundamental Premise of Controlled Fusion Research, namely, that any fusion reaction having the character of a beam-target process must necessarily be more inefficient than a thermonuclear process with a confined thermal plasma at a suitably high temperature. Open questions that need attention of researchers are highlighted. A future course of action is suggested that individual plasma focus laboratories could adopt in order to positively influence the future growth of research in this field, to the general benefit of not only the controlled fusion research community but also the world at large.

Project work strategies in fusion research

In this article, we examine and discuss observations on projectification from organizational and management studies and contextualize them with recent insights from the discourse around social acceleration. Against the backdrop of these debates, we ethnographically inquire into project work strategies in fusion research. First, we briefly survey existing scholarship that interrogates acceleration and projectification of research. Second, we explain why we focus on projects in fusion research and introduce the site of our investigation. In the third section, we identify three project work strategies in fusion research: content adjusting, temporal stretching, and (de)consolidation. In the final part, we argue that the highlighted project work strategies emerge as a product of the dialectical interplay of projectification and stabilization contexts that yields new spaces and opportunities for crafting agency and negotiating time in research that go beyond the reductive fast/slow dichotomy that nowadays tends to characterize contemporary accounts of temporality in and of research.

Prospects for high gain inertial fusion energy: an introduction to the second edition

Part II of this special edition contains the remaining 11 papers arising from a Hooke discussion meeting held in March 2020 devoted to exploring the current status of inertial confinement fusion research worldwide and its application to electrical power generation in the future, via the development of an international inertial fusion energy programme. It builds upon increased coordination within Europe over the past decade by researchers supported by the EUROFusion Enabling Research grants, as well as collaborations that have arisen naturally with some of America's and Asia's leading researchers, both in the universities and national laboratories. The articles are devoted to informing an update to the European roadmap for an inertial fusion energy demonstration reactor, building upon the commonalities between the magnetic and inertial fusion communities’ approaches to fusion energy. A number of studies devoted to understanding the physics barriers to ignition on current facilities are then presented. The special issue concludes with four state-of-the-art articles describing recent significant advances in fast ignition inertial fusion research. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Prospects for high gain inertial fusion energy (part 2)’.