> Are these sorts of instabilities harder to control in a tokamak as compared to a stellarator, or did you just bring those up as examples of magnetic confinement?

I was just shooting from the hip in the earlier comment alluding to your question and bringing them up as examples of two different approaches to addressing the said issues with instabilities that lead to the complexities of confinement. I think its just a terribly fun thing to think about because of its complexity. Stellarators are attempting to solve the issues passively through design. Tokamaks on the other hand with active control. Theres trade offs to both and neither has reached break even output yet.

I’m personally largely bored with them and think linear is the way to go, even though the laser based inertial confinement reactor at Lawrence is the first to reach breakeven output… experimentally at least.