Nuclear fusion breakthrough as AI helps track plasma turbulence in prototype reactors

Testing the trained models on real video clips of turbulent plasma, the team found that the models were able to identify blobs with a high degree of accuracy — more than 80 percent in some cases.

Moreover, the models were also able to effectively estimate both the sizes of the blobs and the speeds at which they moved.

Given the millions of frames of video are captured in each single fusion experiment, the application of artificial intelligence to track turbulent blobs has the ability to give scientists substantially more detailed information to refine reactor design and operation.

Dr Golfinopoulos explained: “Before, we could get a macroscopic picture of what these structures are doing on average. Now, we have a microscope and the computational power to analyse one event at a time.

“If we take a step back, what this reveals is the power available from these machine learning techniques, and ways to use these computational resources to make progress.”

READ MORE: Experts shine light on disruptions preventing practical nuclear fusion

Article source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1692853/energy-nuclear-fusion-ai-machine-learning-track-plasma-turbulence-blobs-reactors