A larger and more advanced version of JET known as ITER (meaning “The Way" in Latin) is under construction on a 180-hectare site in Saint-Paul-lès-Durance, southern France. The results provided a major boost ahead of the next phase of nuclear fusion’s development. Follow the link to learn more about the successful nuclear fusion experiment at JET. This was almost triple the previous 21.7 MJ record set at the same facility in 1997, with the results touted as ‘the clearest demonstration in a quarter of a century of the potential for fusion energy to deliver safe and sustainable low-carbon energy’. In a sustained five-second burst, researchers in the EUROfusion consortium released a record-breaking 59 megajoules (MJ) of fusion energy. Such plasmas can reach temperatures of 150 million degrees Celsius, an unfathomable 10 times hotter than the Sun’s core. Inside, superheated gases called plasmas are generated in which the fusion reactions take place, containing charged particles that are held in place by powerful magnetic fields. This came at the Joint European Torus (JET) research facility in Oxfordshire, UK, in a giant, doughnut-shaped machine called a tokamak. Some hope so, following a major breakthrough during a nuclear-fusion experiment in late 2021. The quest began decades ago, but could a long-running joke that nuclear fusion is always 30 years away soon start to look old? Sustaining this at scale has the potential to produce a safe, clean, almost inexhaustible power source. Nuclear fusion reactors aim to replicate this process by fusing hydrogen atoms to create helium, releasing energy in the form of heat. Given that incredible power and longevity, it seems there can hardly be a better way to generate energy than by harnessing the same nuclear processes that occur in our own and other stars. The Sun has fuelled life on Earth for billions of years, creating light and heat through nuclear fusion.
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