Thermal stability and control of a self-heated tokamak plasma
In plain words
When most heating comes from fusion itself, a small temperature rise can raise fusion power and heat the plasma further. Whether a reactor plasma stays steady and can be steered with available controls has not been tested.
Precise statement
With alpha heating $P_\alpha$ proportional to $n^2 \langle\sigma v\rangle(T)$ and confinement degrading with power, determine whether high-gain ($Q$ of 10 or more) or ignited tokamak operating points are thermally stable and controllable with realistic actuators (fueling, auxiliary heating, impurity seeding), including profile self-organization and coupling to pedestal and density limits. An answer is the stable, controllable operating region from a validated integrated model.
What would settle it
Integrated core-edge burning-plasma simulations validated in ITER D-T operation.