Nuclear fusion is the process that heats the stars through the collision of atomic nuclei which fuse together to form heavier elements and release energy. Thegeneration of energy using this process has several advantages: no carbon emissions(the only by-products of fusion reactions are small amounts of helium), abundant fuel supplies (fuel material can be extracted from water and produced from lithium and so is strategically secure), efficiency(one kilogram of fusion fuel can provide the same amount of energy as 10 million kilograms of fossil fuel), operationally safe (major accidents impossible, no meltdown, no criticality issues concerning reactivity), reliable power(fusion power plants could supply constant amounts of electricity independently of weather conditions).

One way to achieve the necessary conditions for producing fusion energy on earth is by controlling a hot gas of fully ionized hydrogen isotopes (plasma) with strong magnets in a ring-shaped magnetic chamber known as tokamak. The real-time control of this hot plasma requires magnetic diagnostic and actuators which must be designed to be reliable and immune to undesirable interferences. The heating and stabilization of the plasma partly rest on Radio-Frequency (RF) antennas which must be designed and controlled carefully to avoid undesired plasma-wall interactions that can produce excessive heat-loads and endanger the integrity of the machine. Also, the safe installation of the different diagnostics, devices and structures in and around the fusion machine requires the knowledge of the Lorentz forces induced by the time-varying electromagnetic fields present during the operation of the machine.

From the above, it is clear that nuclear fusion engineering and design could greatly benefit from the use of computational electromagnetic software tools. This article shows how some of these tools have helped in the solution of fusion engineering problems.