Burning plasma

A plasma in which heating by the fusion reactions' own alpha particles is the largest source of heating, outweighing the heating supplied from outside. ITER describes it as a plasma in which self-heating dominates any other form of heating. The National Ignition Facility reported reaching it in a Nature paper published in January 2022, from experiments that came before its first target gain above 1. In a magnetic device, alpha heating overtakes external heating once plasma gain passes 5, since the alpha particles carry a fifth of D-T fusion energy; no magnetic device has reached that, and ITER's design gain of 10 would put it well inside the regime. A burning plasma is a step towards ignition, not the same thing.

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concept:burning-plasma

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