Scientists may have discovered a way to improve fusion reactors.
Interesting Engineering reported on experiments inside a tokamak, a doughnut-shaped machine that contains plasma. Instead of only pre-coating the walls with lithium, researchers tried injecting lithium powder while the plasma was active. Turns out, that kept things steadier.
Doesn’t sound flashy. But when you’re running something hotter than the sun’s core, even tiny improvements can mean the difference between progress and yet another shutdown.
The heat inside a fusion reactor isn’t just hot, it’s brutal. That kind of punishment destroys most materials. A tiny crack? Shutdown. Graphite burns out too quickly. Tungsten sheds dust. Neither keeps plasma under control. Lithium is different. It handles the heat and calms the plasma at the same time.
Researchers compared two methods: coating the walls before the plasma runs and injecting lithium during operation. The second option won. It flattened temperatures along the plasma’s edge and gave operators more control.
“If one desires to use Li to achieve flatter temperature profiles, operando Li injection is advantageous over pre-deposited Li films, at least at temperatures below the melting point of lithium,” the study explained.
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Florian Effenberg, a physicist with the Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, put it simply: “As we transition tokamaks away from graphite walls because of their high rate of erosion and the dust produced and toward wall materials such as tungsten, we need to find a way to condition these walls so that the hot core of the plasmas better tolerates them.”
IE stated that “lithium is a leading candidate for the job and powder injection offers a practical bridge toward fully liquid lithium walls.” Tests are already planned for the National Spherical Torus Experiment-Upgrade, with the goal to use fully liquid lithium in the future Spherical Tokamak Advanced Reactor.
Effenberg also pointed out that lithium walls absorb fuel atoms instead of bouncing them back, which helps keep plasma stable and makes high power levels possible without frying the equipment.
Fusion itself is different from the nuclear plants we know today. Instead of splitting atoms, it fuses them — the same process powering the sun. Done right, it could create nearly unlimited electricity from small amounts of fuel. And without the long-lived radioactive waste left behind by fission. That means cheaper bills, less reliance on dirty fuels such as coal and gas, and cleaner air.
Still, nuclear power is complicated. On the upside, it produces huge amounts of low-carbon electricity. On the downside, there is radioactive waste, high upfront costs, and safety questions. Fusion might tip that balance, but it’s still years from showing up on the grid.
Even so, progress is progress. Lithium walls won’t solve every problem, but they give researchers another tool to keep reactors running longer. Each step pushes fusion closer to leaving the lab and entering homes.
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