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In fusion reactor designs, superconductors (which suffer no resistive power loss) are used to generate the magnetic fields that confine the 100 million degree C plasma. While increasing magnetic field strength offers potential ways to improve reactor performance, conventional low-temperature superconductors suffer dramatic drops in current carrying ability at high magnetic fields. Now, the emergence of high-temperature superconductors that can also operate at high magnetic fields opens a new, lower-cost path to fusion energy.
[...] While scientists have explored both of these paths to improving performance, the recent development of the so-called "high-temperature superconductors" opens a window for much higher magnetic fields, as the critical currents do not degrade rapidly, even at magnetic field values of 30 Tesla or higher. So these should really be called high-temperature, high-magnetic-field superconductors.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Muad'Dave on Friday November 13 2015, @12:03PM
There are other ways [wikipedia.org], including a carbon nanotube version [newscientist.com].
(Score: 2) by Marco2G on Friday November 13 2015, @12:20PM
I don't know how the efficiency in the first article relates to real life efficiency of current methods.
And the second article is hype. It implies current methods have ridiculously low efficiency. This new method promises 20 times as much efficiency. So.... did we go from 0.1% to 2%? What efficiency range are we actually talking about here?