01 April 2021
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Scientists at the US Department of Energy's (DOE) DIII-D National Fusion Facility have released a new concept for a compact fusion reactor design they say can help define the technology necessary for commercial fusion power. The Compact Advanced Tokamak (CAT) concept enables a higher-performance, self-sustaining configuration that holds energy more efficiently, allowing it to be built at a reduced scale and cost.
(Image: GA)
The CAT concept is described in an article published on 19 March in the journal
Nuclear Fusion, and was developed from first-of-a-kind reactor simulations. The physics-based approach combines theory developed at the General Atomics (GA)-operated DIII-D facility with computing by Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists using the Cori supercomputer at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, and is based on development and testing of the underlying physics concepts on DIII-D.