A New Way to Make Fusion Reactors More Efficient

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NoLifeLine
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I am quite new to this site. I have been following this technology (fusion) for many years now. It never seems to be any closer to actual deployment. Do you think we are getting closer? What do you think are the major stumbling blocks? The article below I read today. My understanding is that efficiency is a key failing currently.

Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has devised a method of determining how much interaction between waves and particles contributes to the efficiency loss in tokamaks.

https://www.nowscience.co.uk/single-post/2019/01/21/Scientists-Find-a-New-Way-to-Make-Fusion-Reactors-More-Efficient
 

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Scientists were confident ITER will produce a net energy output even before this work - it can only make it better. We'll see how much. In the most likely case we get something that reduces losses a bit in some cases. Nice, but doesn't change the overall picture.
 
phinds said:
The topic has been discussed here quite a bit. I suggest a forum search

Yes I probably should have. However I had just joined and wanted to dive straight in. Thank you for the reply.
 
NoLifeLine said:
Yes I probably should have. However I had just joined and wanted to dive straight in. Thank you for the reply.
Doing a forum search IS diving straight in. It is the first thing you should always do when you have a question that likely has already been discussed (and that's JUST about everything, given how extensive PF is)