Nuclear fusion: bringing a star down to Earth

Nuclear fusion offers the potential for being a near limitless energy source by fusing together deuterium and tritium nuclei to form helium inside a plasma burning at 100 million K. However, scientific and engineering challenges remain. This paper describes how such a plasma can be confined on Earth, and discusses the similarities and differences with fusion in stars. It focuses on the magnetic confinement technique and, in particular, the method used in a tokamak. The confinement achieved in the equilibrium state is reviewed and it is shown how the confinement can be too good, leading to explosive instabilities at the plasma edge called edge localised modes (ELMs). It is shown how the impact of ELMs can be minimised by the application of magnetic perturbations and discusses the physics behind the penetration of these perturbations into what is ideally a perfect conducting plasma.