Understanding the turbulence in plasmas

A longstanding joke holds that practical fusion power is about 20 years away—and always will be. One simple phenomenon explains why practical, self-sustaining fusion reactions have proved difficult to achieve: Turbulence in the superhot, electrically charged gas, called plasma, that circulates inside a fusion reactor can cause the plasma to lose much of its heat. This prevents the plasma from reaching the temperatures needed to overcome the electrical repulsion between atomic nuclei—which, in turn, prevents those nuclei from fusing together. But in order to tame that turbulence, scientists first must understand it.

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