New record for the time that the “Artificial Sun” worked, the energy from nuclear fusion with the temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius

Scientists in South Korea have announced a new world record for the length of time they maintained temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius – seven times hotter than the core of the sun – during a nuclear fusion experiment, in what they say it’s an important step for this forward-looking energy technology, CNN reports.

Nuclear fusion attempts to replicate the reaction that makes the Sun and other stars shine, by fusing two atoms together to release huge amounts of energy. Often referred to as the holy grail of clean energy, fusion has the potential to provide unlimited energy without the planet-warming carbon pollution. But mastering the process on Earth is extremely difficult.

The most common way to obtain fusion energy involves a pretzel-shaped reactor called a tokamak, in which types of hydrogen are heated to extraordinarily high temperatures to create a plasma.

High-temperature, high-density plasmas, where reactions can take place for long periods of time, are vital to the future of nuclear fusion reactors, said Si-Woo Yoon, director of the KSTAR Research Center at the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy (KFE), which achieved the new record.

Maintaining these high temperatures “has not been easy to demonstrate because of the unstable nature of high-temperature plasma,” he told CNN, which is why this recent record is so important.

KSTAR, KFE’s fusion research device, which it calls an “artificial sun”, was able to sustain plasma at temperatures of 100 million degrees for 48 seconds during tests between December 2023 and February 2024, breaking the record previously set in a 30-second test that took place in 2021.

KFE scientists said they were able to extend the time by tweaking the process, including using tungsten instead of carbon in the “deviators,” which extract the heat and impurities produced by the fusion reaction.

The ultimate goal is for KSTAR to be able to maintain plasma temperatures of 100 million degrees for 300 seconds by 2026, a “critical point” for expanding fusion operations, Si-Woo Yoon said.

What South Korean scientists are doing will contribute to the development of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in southern France, known as ITER, the world’s largest tokamak, which aims to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion.

KSTAR’s work “will be of great help to ensure the timely performance of ITER operation and advance the commercialization of fusion energy,” said Si-Woo Yoon.

This announcement is in addition to a number of other discoveries in the field of nuclear fusion.

In 2022, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility in the United States made history by successfully completing a nuclear fusion reaction that produced more energy than was used to fuel the experiment.

In February of this year, scientists near the English city of Oxford announced that they had set a record for producing the most energy in a fusion reaction. They produced 69 megajoules of fusion energy for five seconds, which is roughly enough to power 12,000 homes for the same amount of time.

But the commercialization of nuclear fusion still remains a long way off, as scientists work to solve the complicated engineering and scientific difficulties.

Nuclear fusion “isn’t ready yet and therefore cannot help us now to solve the climate crisis,” said Aneeqa Khan, a fusion researcher at the University of Manchester in the UK.

However, she added, if progress continues, fusion “has the potential to be part of a green energy mix in the second half of the century.”

Publisher: AC

Download the Digi24 app and find out the most important news of the day