A team of scientists from the EUROfusion consortium has achieved a new absolute energy record after maintaining a nuclear fusion energy of 59 megajoules for five seconds in the JET reactor in the United Kingdom. The possibility of being able to use the power of the stars is getting closer.
The Holy Grail of energy
Fusion energy could lead to the creation of dozens of “little suns” on Earth and would allow this type of energy to become a safe, efficient and low-emission means of dealing with the energy crisis that the entire planet is experiencing. .
Fusion reactor models suggest that the optimal fuel will be a mixture of tritium, an isotope of hydrogen, made up of one proton and two neutrons, and deuterium. The first fusion experiments carried out with tritium since 1997 have produced a record amount of energy of 59 megajoules of heat (equivalent to about 14 kg of TNT) in five seconds, something that, as we have just seen, has surpassed, and by far, the same JET reactor in the UK. It’s not a huge power output, that’s clear, but it more than doubles the previous fusion record set 25 years ago and paves the way for the ITER ( International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor ) project being built in the south of France (and which is an even larger fusion reactor).
The problem with tritium is that it is expensive to produce, store, and handle, so most research facilities use the more readily available isotopes instead. And, in fact, the Joint European Torus (JET) is the only fusion research facility that uses tritium.
The feat has been made possible after more than two decades of testing and improvement at the Culham Fusion Energy Center and has been hailed as a “major milestone” on the road to fusion as a viable and sustainable low-carbon energy source. It is expected that if we can harness this technology on a much larger scale, reactors will provide unlimited clean energy around the world, because they do not release greenhouse gases and 1 kg of fusion fuel contains about 10 million times more energy than 1 kg of coal, oil or gas.
A scientific and engineering challenge
Fusion proponents hope that ITER will achieve the goal of producing much more energy than is needed to function, although many are skeptical. How much energy would it take to build a nuclear fusion plant? they wonder.
JET, at the moment, is too small a reactor for these purposes but it is an excellent testing ground to work with the tritium fuel when ITER operations begin.
“The latest experiments at JET are an important step towards ITER,” explains Sibylle Günter, Scientific Director of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. “What we have learned in the last few months will make it easier for us to plan experiments with fusion plasmas that generate much more energy than it takes to heat them.”
If all goes well with ITER, the next step will be to build a European demonstration power plant that produces more electricity than it uses and is connected to the grid.
How does fusion power work?
By colliding heavy hydrogen atoms to form helium, releasing large amounts of energy; basically mimicking the process that occurs naturally in the center of stars like our Sun.
In China, the ‘artificial sun’ nuclear fusion reactor also recently set a new world record after operating at 70 million °C for 1056 seconds, more than 17 minutes.
Reference: CIEMAT
