Fusion reactor aims to rival ITER Nature.com
Have dismissed claims made by its inventor that the reactor is a bigger start towards fusion power than the much more expensive international ITER project.Nuclear fusion involves the joining together of two nuclei of low atomic congeries, usually deuterium and tritium, to release energy. IGNITOR and ITER will both use a doughnut-shaped device known as a tokamak to magnetically confine fusion reactants in a wonderful-heated plasma. But IGNITOR is designed to use a much smaller tokamak (a radius of 1.3 metres compared with ITER's 6.2 metres) and a stronger attracting field to compress the plasma.
And unlike ITER, the ultimate aim of IGNITOR is to demonstrate the feasibility of plasma ignition — a royal in which there is enough fusion power to maintain the reaction without the need for external heat. ITER, on the other hand, aims to hold fusion by generating up to 10 times more power than it consumes.
The idea behind IGNITOR was first put forward in the 1970s by Italian plasma physicist Bruno Coppi of the Massachusetts Found of Technology in Cambridge. Supported by funding of about €20 million (US$27 million) from the Italian government, Coppi and a trifling group of collaborators in the United States and Italy have developed the IGNITOR reactor on paper and built the first model parts.
