Scientists at the Joint European Torus experiment near Oxford managed to produce sustained fusion energy for five entire seconds. This is a big step forward for nuclear fusion technology, and it brings humanity close to harnasses the same energy that powers the sun.
British officials announced the breakthrough on Wednesday, stating that the scientist at the facility was able to generate a record-breaking amount of heat energy for five seconds. The UK Atomic Energy Authority said the experiment generated 59 megajoules of sustained fusion energy, which is more than double the previous record set in 1997.
The program manager for EuroFusion, Tony Donne, said that they are confident that they can soon step up the time they can sustain fusion from five seconds to five minutes and then to five hours in future versions of their machine. He added that the breakthrough is a big moment for the entire fusion community.
The facility, called JET, is home to the world's most powerful and largest operational tokamak - a donut-shaped machine that uses magnetic fields to contain fusion reactions.
Scientists have been working for decades to learn how to harness the power of fusion. Energy is generated when hydrogen atoms are compressed and heated to incredible amounts, forcing them to combine into helium. The process generates an enormous amount of energy. Scientists from all around the world are approaching the problem differently, and the tokamak method is proving to be one of the most effective ways in generating controlled fusion.
While the JET facility was able to sustain fusion for five seconds, it still took more power to ignite and sustain fusion than what was generated by the machine. Nevertheless, the achievement was well received by researchers from all over the globe, most of which are calling it a huge step forward.
Carolyn Kuranz at the University of Michigan said the experiment was an "exciting" step forward to finally achieving controlled fusion. She added that the results were also very promising for ITER, a multi-government experimental fusion facility being built in southern France. ITER is being backed by multiple European countries, Japan, Russia, China, India, South Korea, and the United States.
According to Riccardo Betti, a fusion expert at the University of Rochester, the achievement was mainly in maintaining the reaction at high-performance levels for five seconds, which was much longer than had previously been achieved in a tokamak. Ian Fells, an emeritus professor of energy conversion at the University of Newcastle, said the new record is a watershed moment in fusion research.
The technology employed by JET to obtain the results, which uses magnets to manipulate ultra-hot plasma, shows that harnessing fusion is achievable,
