The AI that could make fusion power a reality

Researchers have tapped into artificial intelligence to help overcome some of fusion energy's greatest challenges. By feeding a machine-learning program data from past experiments, it can reveal links between processes that cause complications in the plasma's behaviour This could help to avoid such disruptions, which lead to rapid loss of stored thermal and magnetic energy, and can even threaten the machine itself. According to the researchers, this approach could be used to analyze the behaviour of plasma inside a tokamak. Fusion involves placing hydrogen atoms under high heat and pressure until they fuse into helium atoms. When deuterium and tritium nuclei - which can be found in hydrogen - fuse, they form a helium nucleus, a neutron and a lot of energy.