Josefine Proll

Turbulence in Fusion Plasmas

Turbulence is a major obstacle for building fusion reactors. We use theory and simulation to further our understanding of turbulence and ultimately find magnetic field shapes that minimise turbulence.

Thanks to the multitude of shapes available, we can optimise stellarators even for turbulence.

Plasma turbulence is one of the last fundamental obstacles to harnessing nuclear fusion for power generation. The stellarator concept, which is presently seeing the successful operation of the Wendelstein 7-X experiment, can potentially be optimized to make turbulence negligible. However, in W7-X the magnetic field geometry is optimized for good confinement only. Due to the computational expense of direct numerical turbulence simulation in 3D stellarator geometry, and the lack of accurate reduced predictive models, turbulence could not be incorporated in the optimisation of the design. But it must, if the stellarator concept is to be a power plant candidate. 

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News

Alternative road to nuclear fusion

December 11, 2019

The description 'recreating the Sun on earth' is sometimes applied to the nuclear fusion reactor, but a consensus among scientists about just how this 'Sun' can best be tamed has not yet been reached. Plasma expert Josefine Proll is a fan of the stellarator reactor, an alternative for the more mainstream tokamak recently revived. With a new NWO grant, she hopes to give this technology a decisive advantage. Read more 

Article 'Fusing different areas of plasma research' in Nature Research

NWO grant for new nuclear fusion reactor

July 16, 2019

Researcher Josefine Proll will investigate new ways to minimise turbulence in fusion reactors. Read more

Meet some of our Researchers

Associate Professor
(Part-time)

Josefine Proll

Ralf Mackenbach

Recent Publications

Our most recent peer reviewed publications