{"id":193394,"date":"2024-07-23T18:31:55","date_gmt":"2024-07-23T23:31:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/creating-loops-of-liquid-lithium-for-fusion-temperature-control"},"modified":"2024-07-23T18:31:55","modified_gmt":"2024-07-23T23:31:55","slug":"creating-loops-of-liquid-lithium-for-fusion-temperature-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/creating-loops-of-liquid-lithium-for-fusion-temperature-control","title":{"rendered":"Creating loops of liquid lithium for fusion temperature control"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/creating-loops-of-liquid-lithium-for-fusion-temperature-control2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Fusion vessels have a Goldilocks problem: The plasma within needs to be hot enough to generate net power, but if it\u2019s too hot, it can damage the vessel\u2019s interior. Researchers at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) are exploring ways to draw away excess heat, including several methods that use liquid metal.<\/p>\n<p>One possibility, say researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy Lab, involves flowing liquid <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/lithium\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">lithium<\/a> up and down a series of slats in tiles lining the bottom of the vessel. The liquid metal could also help to protect the components that face the <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/plasma\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">plasma<\/a> against a bombardment of particles known as neutrons.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe prevailing option for an economical commercial fusion reactor is a compact design,\u201d said PPPL\u2019s Egemen Kolemen, co-author of a <a href=\"https:\/\/iopscience.iop.org\/article\/10.1088\/1741-4326\/ac6682\" target=\"_blank\">2022 paper<\/a> on the research and an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. However, compactness makes handling the <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/heat+flux\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">heat flux<\/a> and neutron bombardment a bigger challenge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fusion vessels have a Goldilocks problem: The plasma within needs to be hot enough to generate net power, but if it\u2019s too hot, it can damage the vessel\u2019s interior. Researchers at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) are exploring ways to draw away excess heat, including several methods that use liquid metal. One possibility, say [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,873,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-engineering","category-nuclear-energy","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193394\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}