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PPPL researchers find way to build high-temperature superconducting magnets for fusion devices

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Such powerful magnets would more easily fit within the tight space inside spherical tokamaks, which are shaped more like a cored apple than the doughnut-like shape of conventional tokamaks, and are being explored as a possible design for future fusion power plants. Collage by Kiran Sudarsanan).

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Welcome to Fusion City, USA

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A sleepy strip mall beside Boeing’s sprawling campus in Everett, WA isn’t necessarily where you’d expect to find technology promising to harness the power of the sun, release humanity from the grip of fossil fuels, and unlock an estimated US $40 trillion market. Zap isn’t the only fusion company fishing in aviation’s talent pool.

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General Fusion Takes Aim at Practical Fusion Power

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It might be time to retire that overused joke about nuclear fusion always being 30 years away. Burnaby, British Columbia-based General Fusion plans to build a large-scale demonstration reactor at the UK's national fusion research laboratory campus in Culham near Oxford. This compresses the plasma and forces a fusion reaction.

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This Fusion Reactor Is Held Together With Tape

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Brandon Sorbom , the scientific director of Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) , leads me toward the center of the building’s cross-shaped footprint, weaving among scaffolding, forklifts, and teams of welders and painters. On the site of a former U.S. Army Reserve base near Boston, an unusual structure is rising from the rolling hills.

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NASA’s New Shortcut to Fusion Power

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And scientists and engineers have continued to study the sun’s fusion process in hopes of one day using nuclear fusion to generate heat or electricity. Consequently, governments, universities, and companies have long looked to fusion to remedy these ills. But the prospect of meeting our energy needs this way remains elusive.

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Has Fusion Really Had Its "Wright Brothers" Moment?

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If it had ever left the spotlight, nuclear fusion is certainly now back. There have recently been new books , big announcements from small fusion companies , and the widely-shared news of a new record for energy produced at the National Ignition Facility , at the U.S. As the joke goes, fusion is always 40 years away.

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Ford unveils Fusion Hybrid research vehicle for autonomous driving

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Ford Fusion Hybrid automated research vehicle with four LiDAR sensors. Ford, in conjunction with the University of Michigan and State Farm, unveiled a Ford Fusion Hybrid automated research vehicle that will be used to make progress on future autonomous driving and other advanced technologies. Click to enlarge. Click to enlarge.

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