ESC research group news

The core of a fusion reactor is incredibly hot. Hydrogen that inevitably escapes from it must be cooled on its way to the wall, as otherwise, the reactor wall would be damaged. Researchers from the Dutch institute DIFFER and the EPFL’s Swiss Plasma Center have developed a strict measurement and control method for the cooling of very hot particles escaping from fusion plasmas.

It was a practical with a calorimeter – how do you heat up a litre of water – during the physics open day, which caused Matthijs van Berkel to decide not to study physics. ‘I found heating up water quite dull.