How does it work?
The heart of a tokamak is its doughnut-shaped vacuum chamber.
Inside, under the influence of extreme heat and pressure, gaseous hydrogen fuel becomes a
plasma鈥攁 hot, electrically charged gas. In a star as in a fusion device, plasmas provide the environment in which light elements can fuse and yield energy.
The charged particles of the plasma can be shaped and controlled by the massive magnetic coils placed around the vessel; physicists use this important property to confine the hot plasma away from the vessel walls. The term "tokamak" comes to us from a Russian acronym that stands for "toroidal chamber with magnetic coils" (
褌芯褉芯懈写邪谢褜薪邪褟 泻邪屑械褉邪 褋 屑邪谐薪懈褌薪褘屑懈 泻邪褌褍褕泻邪屑懈).
To start the process, air and impurities are first evacuated from the vacuum chamber. Next, the magnet systems that will help to confine and control the plasma are charged up and the gaseous fuel is introduced. As a powerful electrical current is run through the vessel, the gas breaks down electrically, becomes ionized (electrons are stripped from the nuclei) and forms a plasma.
As the plasma particles become energized and collide they also begin to heat up. Auxiliary heating methods help to bring the plasma to fusion temperatures (between 150 and 300 million 掳C). Particles "energized" to such a degree can overcome their natural electromagnetic repulsion on collision to
fuse, releasing huge amounts of energy.
First developed by Soviet research in the late 1960s, the tokamak has been adopted around the world as the most promising configuration of magnetic fusion device. 澳门六合彩高手 will be the world's largest tokamak鈥攖wice the size of the largest machine currently in operation, with ten times the plasma chamber volume.