Seoul National University's College of Engineering (Dean Byoungho Lee) announced on September 7 (Tuesday) that Dr. SangKyeun Kim and Min-Gu Yoo, who graduated from the Department of Nuclear Engineering, were awarded the Young Researcher Award by the Division of Plasma Physics of the Association of Asia Pacific Physical Societies.
 
The Association of Asia Pacific Physical Societies' Young Researcher Award is given to young researchers under the age of 30 and 40 who have made significant contributions to various specific research fields in plasma physics, and Dr. SangKyeun Kim received the award for those under the age of 30 while Dr. Min-Gu Yoo for those under the age of 40.
 
Dr. SangKyeun Kim and Dr. Min-Gu Yoo were selected as winners in recognition of their achievements in researching the plasma interface instability of the tokamak, a nuclear fusion device and revealing the fundamental principle of the initial start-up phenomenon, respectively, under the guidance of Professor Yong-Su Na of the Department of Nuclear Engineering.
 
The interface instability that occurs in nuclear fusion plasma can cause fatal damage to the devices that trap high-temperature plasma and so the Tokamak applies a three-dimensional magnetic field to the plasma to suppress it. However, the mechanism of suppressing interface instability through this method has not been elucidated so far.

 
Through three-dimensional non-linear simulations and experiments with domestic KSTAR tokamak devices, Dr. SangKyeun Kim and Professor Yong-Su Na's research team broke away from the conventional ideas of the academic world that are limited to linear interpretation and revealed that the nonlinear interaction between plasma and boundary instability according to the application of the three-dimensional magnetic field plays a decisive role in controlling the instability phenomenon.
 
In addition, based on this study, the conditions for applying a three-dimensional magnetic field for stable boundary instability control were presented, and is expected to greatly contribute to the design and optimization of future nuclear fusion devices such as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor ITER in which the EU, the United States, Japan, Russia, China, India, and South Korea are participating in.
 
Meanwhile, the research results were published in the IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency and Nuclear Fusion, which are prestigious societies in the field of nuclear fusion.
 
Currently, Dr. SangKyeun Kim has been a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University in the United States since 2020, and is conducting physical research on the effect of three-dimensional magnetic fields on the nuclear fusion plasma structure.
 

 
In addition, the research team of Dr. Min-Gu Yoo and Professor Yong-Su Na revealed the contradiction of the existing traditional theories that have been widely used for decades in the nuclear fusion start-up research and through self-developed three-dimensional simulations and experiments with domestic KSTAR tokamak devices, demonstrated for the first time that the plasma generates a strong electric field by itself and that the resulting turbulent transport determines the initial plasma formation.
 
As a new paradigm of startup scenario design, it is expected to have a great ripple effect in designing and optimizing the initial startup scenario of future nuclear fusion devices such as ITER by presenting a phase analysis methodology that can easily analyze complex electromagnetic field structures.