{"id":246053,"date":"2026-10-28T09:09:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T14:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/radio-waves-drive-a-fusion-plasma-current-that-could-help-reactors-run-continuously"},"modified":"2026-10-28T09:09:00","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T14:09:00","slug":"radio-waves-drive-a-fusion-plasma-current-that-could-help-reactors-run-continuously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/radio-waves-drive-a-fusion-plasma-current-that-could-help-reactors-run-continuously","title":{"rendered":"Radio waves drive a fusion plasma current that could help reactors run continuously"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>For the first time, a team of physicists in the U.S. has clearly demonstrated a \u201chelicon current drive\u201d in a nuclear fusion experiment. Led by Jeff Lestz at General Atomics, San Diego, the team took advantage of the latest advances in tokamak technology to show that radio waves steered to travel around the donut-shaped device can be absorbed by its confined plasma, driving an electric current inside it.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/prl\/abstract\/10.1103\/mbn4-fd4v\" target=\"_blank\">Published<\/a> in <i>Physical Review Letters<\/i>, the results could help future fusion reactors to operate continuously.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the first time, a team of physicists in the U.S. has clearly demonstrated a \u201chelicon current drive\u201d in a nuclear fusion experiment. Led by Jeff Lestz at General Atomics, San Diego, the team took advantage of the latest advances in tokamak technology to show that radio waves steered to travel around the donut-shaped device [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[873,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nuclear-energy","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246053","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\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246053\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}