Scientists and engineers in the vicinity of Oxford, England, have achieved a groundbreaking milestone in the realm of nuclear fusion energy, as they revealed on Thursday, bringing this clean and futuristic power source one step closer to reality.
Through the utilization of the Joint European Torus (JET), an immense, torus-shaped apparatus known as a tokamak, the researchers sustained a record 69 megajoules of fusion energy for a duration of five seconds, utilizing a mere 0.2 milligrams of fuel.
Nuclear fusion, the process that fuels the sun and other stars, holds immense potential as a clean energy solution. Over the decades, experts have dedicated themselves to mastering this highly intricate process on Earth. If successful, fusion could unlock vast amounts of energy with minimal fuel input while emitting no carbon emissions that contribute to global warming.
The scientists injected deuterium and tritium, hydrogen variants expected to be used in future commercial fusion plants, into the tokamak.
To trigger fusion, the team elevated temperatures within the machine to an astounding 150 million degrees Celsius — approximately 10 times hotter than the sun’s core. This extreme heat compels the deuterium and tritium to fuse together, forming helium and releasing tremendous amounts of energy in the process.
The tokamak is equipped with powerful magnets to contain the plasma, while the generated heat is harnessed and converted into electricity.
This experiment represents the final one of its kind for JET, which has been operational for over four decades. The achievement, and subsequent new record, bodes well for newer fusion projects, remarked Ambrogio Fasoli, CEO of EUROfusion, the consortium overseeing the experiment. Fasoli highlighted ITER, the world’s largest tokamak under construction in southern France, and DEMO, a machine intended to succeed ITER as a prototype fusion plant capable of producing even greater energy output.
“Our successful demonstration of operational scenarios for future fusion machines like ITER and DEMO, validated by the new energy record, instil greater confidence in the development of fusion energy,” stated Fasoli.
While fusion energy holds promise as a transformative solution to the climate crisis, it’s a technology that is likely still years away from commercialization. Aneeqa Khan, a research fellow in nuclear fusion at the University of Manchester, noted that despite this scientific achievement, significant challenges remain, such as the fact that more energy was consumed in the experiment than was generated.
“This is a significant scientific achievement, but we still have a long way to go before commercial fusion. The construction of a fusion power plant also poses numerous engineering and materials challenges,” said Khan. “However, investment in fusion is increasing, and we are making real progress. We need to train a large number of people with the skills to work in this field, and I hope this technology will be utilized in the latter half of the century.”
The announcement of this record coincides with the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service confirming that the world has surpassed a global warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius over a 12-month period for the first time. While scientists are primarily concerned about longer-term warming trends exceeding this threshold, it serves as a stark reminder of the urgent need to address climate change.
Climate science underscores the necessity of nearly halving global greenhouse gas emissions by the end of this decade and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 to prevent catastrophic levels of global warming. This entails a swift transition away from fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas.