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Stellarator

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A stellarator produces the twisted magnetic field needed to confine plasma entirely from external, non-planar coils, rather than from a current driven through the plasma. This removes the tokamak's dependence on plasma current and with it a family of current-driven disruptions, at the cost of a coil geometry that is far harder to design and manufacture. The concept was proposed by Lyman Spitzer at Princeton in 1951 and was for decades the underperforming alternative to the tokamak. Modern numerically optimised stellarators have narrowed that gap: Wendelstein 7-X in Greifswald reported a record triple product for long-duration plasmas sustained for 43 seconds on 22 May 2025, together with an energy turnover of 1.8 gigajoules over a 360-second discharge. No stellarator has yet operated with deuterium-tritium fuel.

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Evidence · 2
Timeline

No dated observations are stored for this object. Atlas shows what was observed and when — it does not infer a history.

Connections · 2
Assembled narrative · 1

Assembled from 30 blocks · 2 evidence · 25 related

  1. Story
  2. A stellarator produces the twisted magnetic field needed to confine plasma entirely from external, non-planar coils, rather than from a current driven through the plasma. This removes the tokamak's dependence on plasma current and with it a family of current-driven disruptions, at the cost of a coil geometry that is far harder to design and manufacture. The concept was proposed by Lyman Spitzer at Princeton in 1951 and was for decades the underperforming alternative to the tokamak. Modern numerically optimised stellarators have narrowed that gap: Wendelstein 7-X in Greifswald reported a record triple product for long-duration plasmas sustained for 43 seconds on 22 May 2025, together with an energy turnover of 1.8 gigajoules over a 360-second discharge. No stellarator has yet operated with deuterium-tritium fuel.
  3. Knowledge
  4. Tokamak (toroidal magnetic confinement)
  5. Stellarator
  6. Lyman Spitzer Jr.
  7. Connections
  8. Lyman Spitzer Jr.
  9. Tokamak (toroidal magnetic confinement)
  10. Wendelstein 7-X
  11. Spitzer proposes the stellarator; Project Matterhorn begins at Princeton
  12. Wendelstein 7-X sets a triple product record for long-duration plasmas
  13. Stellarator
  14. Spitzer proposes the stellarator; Project Matterhorn begins at Princeton
  15. Fusion triple product (n·T·τ_E)
  16. Tritium
  17. Deuterium
  18. Stellarator
  19. ITER
  20. Joint European Torus (JET)
  21. EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak)
  22. JET's DTE1 campaign sets the first deuterium-tritium fusion power record
  23. JET's DTE2 campaign releases 59 MJ in a single pulse
  24. JET sets the single-pulse fusion energy record of 69.26 MJ
  25. ITER presents an updated project baseline to the ITER Council
  26. EAST sustains a high-confinement plasma for 1,066 seconds
  27. Commonwealth Fusion Systems' declared target for net energy gain at SPARC
  28. Evidence
  29. The stellarator concept and the beginning of organised US magnetic fusion research are both dated to 1951 at Princeton
  30. An optimised stellarator has matched or exceeded tokamak triple-product values for long-duration plasmas, establishing magnetic confinement as more than one design lineage
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Observed changes · 0

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