Twisted Fusion: The Stellarators

Although I’ve written several posts on nuclear fission reactors, and even more that mentions them, I have only written a single posts on nuclear fusion reactors. This earlier post described the two current fusion experiments that have a reasonable path forward to the creation of a working fusion power plant.

In addition to the two designs described in the above post, there is a third much older design, the stellarator. Lately this pioneering design has received much more attention. It was abandoned many decades ago, primarily because the mathematics that describe the physics were just too complex to analyze using then-existing methods, Thus, scientists moved on to a greatly simplified reactor, the tokamak.

However, recently more attention has been focused on the stellarator, and there is a major experiment in Germany that may prove to be the most viable path to a commercial nuclear fusion reactor.

This post is about the past, present and possible future of the stellarator.