Dr. Ali Mahdavi from General Atomics visited ASIPP in mid-April and gave a lecture entitled “A Long Term View of Heat Flux Control in Fusion Devices” in the afternoon of 17th April. Prof. LI Jiangang, Prof. YAO Damao and Prof. LUO Guangnan together with other 30 students came and listened to his lecture.
Heat flux control arguably is the most challenging problem of fusion power reactors. In his presentation, Dr. Mahdavi proposed approaches to address this critically important issue. ASIPP staffs asked several questions right after Dr. Mahdavi finishing the report, and the divertor group had a detailed discussion with Dr. Mahdavi on his “isolated divertor” concept. Dr Mahdavi has promised that he will revisit ASIPP and work for longer time, for example, over two months this year or next year on his proposed isolated divertor.
Dr. Ali Mahdavi is a fellow of the American Physical Society and has served as guest editor for the Fusion Science and Technology journal (PST), an ASIPP monthly journal, and the Journal of Nuclear Materials. He joined the General Atomics in 1972. He developed Thomson Scattering systems for D-II, D-IIA and D-III, where he invented and applied his compact interference filter polychromators.