United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority
Interior of the JET tokamak, which recently conducted a major nuclear fusion experiment.
London
CNN
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Scientists and engineers near the English city of Oxford have achieved a new nuclear fusion energy milestone, announcing on Thursday and bringing the clean, futuristic power source toward reality.
Using the Joint European Torus (JET) — a large, donut-shaped machine named a tokamak — the scientists sustained a record 69 megajoules of fusion energy for five seconds, using only 0.2 milligrams of fuel.
Nuclear fusion is the same process that fuels the sun and other stars, and is widely seen as the ideal clean energy source. Experts have worked for years to master the highly complex process on Earth, and if successful, fusion could produce massive energy with minimal fuel input and emit zero planet-warming carbon.
The scientists supplied the tokamak with deuterium and tritium, hydrogen variants expected to be used by future commercial fusion plants.
To generate fusion energy, the team raised temperatures in the machine to 150 million degrees Celsius — roughly 10 times hotter than the sun’s core. This extreme heat causes the deuterium and tritium to fuse and form helium, releasing significant heat in the process.
The tokamak is equipped with strong magnets to contain the plasma. The heat is then captured and used to generate electricity.
This experiment marks JET’s final one after more than 40 years of operation. The successful outcome, a new energy record, is encouraging for newer fusion projects, according to Ambrogio Fasoli, CEO of EUROfusion, the consortium of 300 experts behind the experiment. He highlighted ITER, the world’s largest tokamak under construction in southern France, and DEMO, a planned machine following ITER with the goal of producing a higher amount of energy, resembling a fusion plant prototype.
“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,” Fasoli stated.
United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority
A view of Torus Hall, where the JET tokamak machine lies.
While fusion energy has the potential to be a gamechanger for the climate crisis caused primarily by human consumption of fossil fuels, it’s a technology that will likely require many more years to commercialize. By the time it’s fully developed, it may be too late to effectively address climate change, according to Aneeqa Khan, research fellow in nuclear fusion at the University of Manchester.
Numerous challenges still remain. Khan noted that the team used more energy for the experiment than it generated.
“This is a significant scientific achievement, but commercial fusion is still a long way off. Constructing a fusion power plant also presents many engineering and materials challenges,” she said. “However, investment in fusion is increasing and progress is being made. We need to train a large number of individuals with the necessary skills to work in this field and hopefully, the technology will be used in the latter half of the century.”
The announcement of the record coincided with the European Union’s climate and weather monitoring service, Copernicus, confirming that the world has surpassed a global warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius over a 12-month period for the first time.
Scientists are more concerned with long-term warming beyond that threshold, but it serves as a symbolic reminder that the world is heading toward a level of climate change that will be difficult to adapt to.
Climate science indicates that the world must nearly halve its greenhouse gas emissions this decade and achieve zero net emissions by 2050 in order to prevent catastrophic levels of global warming. This requires a rapid transition away from fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas.
