Scientists from St. Petersburg have made calculations for the "unstick mode", which will increase the wear resistance of the fusion reactor.
Physicists from the Saint Petersburg State Polytechnic University (SPbSPU) have suggested a way to improve the performance of the tokamak - a fusion reactor model, the media center of the SPbSPU reported. Scientists from St. Petersburg have made calculations for the "unstick mode", which will increase the wear resistance of the reactor.
Tokamak (toroidal chamber with magnetic coils) - is one of the models of the fusion reactor. Magnetic coils keep the plasma, in which the reaction of controlled thermonuclear fusion takes place. The tokamak principle provides basis for the future International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), which is to become the world's first fusion reactor that can demonstrate commercial advantage due to the use of fusion energy that is practically inexhaustible and safe.
It is not with chamber walls but with a magnetic field that the plasma  is kept in a tokamak, because modern materials cannot stand the temperatures required for fusion reactions. However, the energy released in a working tokamak still reaches the reactor's inner walls, thus gradually damaging and destroying them. To solve this problem, researchers of the SPbSPU have come up with the "unstick mode", when certain impurities are added into the diverter (device for maintaining desired temperature of the plasma) in order to prevent the energy currents from touching the walls.
"Scientists of the SPbPU have proven the effeciency of the method  and modeled this mode using the numerical code SOLPS-ITER, which was developed by our department staff jointly with our European colleagues", - the press release cited Vladimir Rozhansky, the head of the Plasma Physics Department.
"The separation mode" will be implemented both in the present-day tokamaks and ITER tokamak, which will have been constructed  in the south of France by 2025.