Nuclear fusion is one step closer with new AI breakthrough

The green energy revolution promised by nuclear fusion is now a step closer, thanks to the first successful use of a cutting-edge artificial intelligence system to shape the superheated hydrogen plasmas inside a fusion reactor. The successful trial indicates that the use of AI could be a breakthrough in the long-running search for electricity generated from nuclear fusion -- bringing its introduction to replace fossil fuels and nuclear fission on modern power grids tantalizingly closer. "I think AI will play a very big role in the future control of tokamaks and in fusion science in general," Federico Felici, a physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and one of the leaders on the project, told Live Science. "There's a huge potential to unleash AI to get better control and to figure out how to operate such devices in a more effective way." Felici is a lead author of a new study describing the project published in the journal Nature.