Scientists set new record in creating energy from nuclear fusion

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Last Updated10/02/2022

Scientists in the United Kingdom said they have achieved a new milestone in producing nuclear fusion energy, or imitating the way energy is produced in the Sun.
A team at the Joint European Torus (JET) facility near Oxford in central England generated 59 megajoules of sustained energy during an experiment in December, more than doubling a 1997 record.
A kg of fusion fuel contains about 10 million times as much energy as a kg of coal, oil or gas.

The energy was produced in a machine called a tokamak, a doughnut-shaped apparatus, and the JET site is the largest operational one of its kind in the world.
Deuterium and tritium, which are isotopes of hydrogen, are heated to temperatures 10 times hotter than the centre of the sun to create plasma.
This is held in place using superconductor electromagnets as it spins around, fuses and releases tremendous energy as heat.
The results announced demonstrate the ability to create fusion for five seconds, but longer times will be needed for the process to become viable as a conventional power source.
A larger and more advanced version of JET is currently being built in southern France, called ITER, where the Oxford data will prove vital when it comes online, possibly as soon as 2025.

Fusion power is a process in which hydrogen or hydrogen isotopes, nuclei are collided and fused with one another to form a heavier nucleus or helium.
This fusion process releases energy, which can be collected and used to generate electricity.
The reaction is not entirely dissimilar from the reactions taking place within the sun.
The easiest hydrogen isotopes that are used to perform this reaction are deuterium and tritium, which have a net energy release of 17.6 MeV per reaction.

The use of fusion power plants could substantially reduce the environmental impacts of increasing world electricity demands since, like nuclear fission power, they would not contribute to acid rain or the greenhouse effect.
Fusion power could easily satisfy the energy needs associated with continued economic growth, given the ready availability of fuels.

The tokamak is an experimental machine designed to harness the energy of fusion.
Inside a tokamak, the energy produced through the fusion of atoms is absorbed as heat in the walls of the vessel.
Just like a conventional power plant, a fusion power plant will use this heat to produce steam and then electricity by way of turbines and generators.

JET is the focal point of the European fusion research programme.
JET was designed to study fusion in conditions approaching those needed for a power plant.
It is the only experiment that can operate with the deuterium-tritium fuel mix that will be used for commercial fusion power.
Since it began operating in 1983, JET has made major advances in the science and engineering of fusion.
Its success has led to the construction of the first commercial-scale fusion machine, ITER.

35 nations in southern France are collaborating to build the world's largest tokamak that has been designed to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy based on the same principle that powers our Sun and stars.
ITER will be the first fusion device to produce net energy – the point when the total power produced during a fusion plasma pulse surpasses the thermal power injected to heat the plasma.
ITER will also be the first fusion device to demonstrate many of the integrated technologies, materials, and physics regimes necessary for the next step, commercial production of fusion-based electricity.