By Shokirbek A. Shermukhamedov
Ecologically clean energy could be generated from nuclear fusion. The challenge is that this requires a plasma with a temperature of 100 million degrees of Celsius. Despite strong magnetic fields that protect the walls of a fusion device, they are still exposed to considerable loads which reduces the lifetime of the plasma-facing materials. Therefore, plasma-wall interaction is one of the main problems of fusion research. The 18th International Conference on Plasma-Facing Materials and Components for Fusion Applications was held during May 17 – 21, 2021 and brought together more than 250 scientists from around the world. This time it was held in an online format due to the pandemic situation. One session of the conference was devoted to “Beryllium - Erosion & Fuel Retention” where leading experts presented the latest achievements concerning this topic. I presented my results in a poster session and discussed the results of our molecular dynamic simulations on beryllium sputtering by low energetic deuterium ions with both experimentalists and computational scientists.
