麻豆淫院

Scientists pursuing magnetically-confined nuclear fusion as a clean energy source grapple with the "core-edge challenge," the need to integrate the core of the reactor, where plasma must be 10 times hotter than the sun, with the reactor's edge. The edge must sustain a lower temperature to avoid melting of the material containing the plasma and extracting its energy to produce power.

While many scholars research only one region of the reactor, nuclear and plasma physicist Livia Casali, an international expert in the nuclear fusion community, studies both, and her unique approach has delivered a milestone that will help make fusion energy a reality.

Casali, Zinkle Faculty Fellow, ITER Research Scientist Fellow, and assistant professor of nuclear engineering, works at the forefront of the core-edge fusion challenge, conducting experiments in leading fusion facilities worldwide and developing new computational tools to simulate the behavior of plasma.

"We've coupled state-of-the-art codes for different regions of the plasma, both the core and the edge, taking into account all the particles in the plasma, including impurities," she said. "At the same time, we're using a flexible and consistent step-by-step process. This approach allows us to see how the regions affect each other."

The integrated simulation framework, named SICAS, includes the SOLPS-ITER edge transport code as well as core transport and impurity modeling tools ASTRA and STRAHL, providing a comprehensive description of the plasma domain.

"Advances in understanding the complex physics interactions where the ultra-hot plasma meets earthly materials is crucial for the successful development of fusion energy," said Steven Zinkle, UT-ORNL Governor's Chair Professor for Nuclear Materials. "This new framework is precisely the right tool at the right time to move fusion energy forward."

"Adding impurities into the transport simulations is important because impurities move in the plasma, increase radiation, and lower the temperature, impacting the plasma's key parameters," Casali said.

"In turn, the plasma parameters will affect impurity behavior at the next time step. With our SICAS tool, we can now track how all the particles interact with each other, creating a clear and consistent view of the whole system. This is crucial to capture complex physics interplay.

"We've validated our framework against experimental data and tested it against different configurations in leading experimental devices. If you change the geometry, change the ions, change the shape of the plasma鈥攚e can reproduce reasonably well the experimental data." This includes the negative triangularity shape configuration for which Casali at the National Fusion Facility.

The details of the new code, including the validation with the experimental data, are published in a letter in by Casali's student Austin Welsh.

"This is a significant milestone for the fusion community," said Casali. "SICAS fills a long-standing gap in our ability to model the entire plasma in a single, integrated simulation. It opens new frontiers not only for interpreting current experiments but also for the design of future reactors, such as ITER and beyond. The most exciting thing for me has been to develop this tool together with all the students in my group."