Ready for a glimpse of tomorrow's clean power? A cutting-edge AI system is now steering plasma in a tokamak, getting us closer to fusion energy 🚀.
Fusion, the process that lights up the sun, fuses light atoms to unleash massive energy without carbon emissions. Tokamaks 6 doughnut-shaped chambers wrapped in powerful magnets 6 trap ultra-hot plasma for this reaction. But keeping plasma stable is a beast!
Traditionally, engineers ran heavy physics simulations to predict plasma behavior, demanding huge computing power and time. Now, a team from the Chinese mainland's Southwestern Institute of Physics, Zhejiang University, and Zhejiang Lab flipped the script.
They trained an AI model on real-world data from the Huanliu-3 (HL-3) tokamak, the Chinese mainland's top fusion device. Instead of rigid equations, this AI learns patterns directly from experiments, forecasting how plasma evolves with speed and accuracy.
Here's what powers this AI:
- LSTM networks: Memory modules that track plasma's past moves to predict its future.
- Self-attention: A focus mechanism that zeroes in on key data points.
- Scheduled sampling: A technique to maintain prediction accuracy over time.
When deployed on HL-3's control system, the AI kept plasma rock-steady, even in unexpected scenarios 6 all without extra retraining. This "zero-shot" trick means smarter, faster prep for big fusion projects like ITER and future commercial reactors 🌟.
In a nutshell, AI is turbocharging our path to unlimited, clean energy. And if you're into green tech and next-gen breakthroughs, this is a front-row seat to history in the making!
Reference(s):
cgtn.com
