Princeton scientists overcome key setback in achieving nuclear fusionPhysicists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have taken a critical step forward toward achieving nuclear fusion by pinpointing the source of the collapse of heat that precedes disruptions that can damage tokamak fusion facilities, according to a press release by the institution published this Tuesday.“In the major disruption case, field lines become totally [disordered] like spaghetti and connect fast to the wall with very different lengths,” said principal research physicist Weixing Wang, Yoo’s PPPL advisor and a coauthor of the paper.“That brings enormous plasma thermal energy against the wall.”Scientists everywhere are working to capture and direct the atomic fusion process on Earth in order to develop a clean, carbon-free and possibly inexhaustible source of power that can generate electricity.One setback that previously remained unknown was the 3D shape, or topology, of the disarrayed field lines caused by turbulent instability.Without magnetic hills, most electrons would have been trapped and could not produce the thermal quench observed in experiments.”Simulating the thermal quench topologyTo reach their conclusions, PPPL scientists simulated the thermal quench topology as a complex 3D structure avoiding the over-simplifications that so often mislead physicists."