Some students manage student dormitories, others manage a nuclear fusion plant. The latter is certainly the plan for students at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney. A small tokamak will be built on the main campus there, which will be designed, built and managed by students from various disciplines. The goal is to have the facility operational within two to three years – but without actually triggering a fusion reaction.
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The planned tokamak is intended to serve two main purposes: a technical and a social one. On the one hand, the aim of the small-scale, donut-shaped system measuring approximately one meter by one meter is to better understand how the hydrogen plasma, which is several million degrees hot, can be maintained in the vacuum chambers without causing damage to the walls – a hurdle that researchers around the world want to overcome in experimental facilities.
The second intention behind the student tokamak is to analyze the social perception and acceptance of fusion technology by the public. It’s about figuring out “how we can best work with society to communicate the benefits that this technology could bring,” explains nuclear engineer Patrick Barr, who leads the project. So the project doesn’t work entirely without experts. Barr is a lecturer at UNSW and researches the degradation mechanisms that nuclear materials are exposed to.
Involve students in challenging projects
With its approach, the Tokamak project is part of the university’s VIP (Vertically Integrated Projects) program. It is designed to engage undergraduate and postgraduate students in challenging, long-term and multidisciplinary projects led by UNSW academics. The program is run by the UNSW Digital Grid Future Institute and industry partners Tokamak Energy (the British start-up is working on small, compact tokamaks and aims to deliver fusion energy in the UK “in the 2030s”) and HB-11 Energy (an Australian Start-up working on boron-proton laser fusion). “We want to inspire the next generation of innovators and show them how they can change the world,” says Barr.
Nuclear fusion offers great hope for energy supply. However, the practical use of energy is still a long way off, even though there are already around 30 companies in the private sector that have received billions in financing from investors. Germany is also relying on fusion research. The Federal Ministry of Research recently increased funding for this research area to one billion euros by 2028. The aim is to support projects from laser fusion, which has recently made progress, but also from magnetic fusion, according to which tokamak systems such as the one planned at UNSW in Australia work.
(jl)
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