Story at a glance
- Scientist have taken one more step in making the use of fusion energy a reality.
- Researchers at the Joint European Torus Laboratory in Oxfordshire were able to produce 59 megajoules of heat from a sustained fusion reaction.
- The amount of heat isn’t much, but it signals a major accomplishment in the world of harnessing fusion energy.
Scientists are one step closer to being able to harness the power of fusion energy.
The Joint European Torus tokamak near Oxford, UK, is a test bed for the world’s largest fusion experiment, ITER, in France.Credit: Christopher Roux (CEA-IRFM)/EUROfusion (CC BY 4.0)
Researchers at the U.K.-based Joint European Torus laboratory broke its own record this week of how much energy can be created from a sustained fusion reaction, according to the experiments findings which were published in the journal Nature.
The experiment produced 59 megajouls of heat, or about 14kg of TNT, during a five-second-long burst of fusion which is double the amount of energy produced during the lab’s previous record setting experiment in 1997.
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“These landmark results have taken us a huge step closer to conquering one of the biggest scientific and engineering challenges of them all,” said Ian Chapman, who leads the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE), where JET is based, in a statement.
JET is owned by the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority, but its scientific operations are run by a European collaboration called EUROfusion.
Fusion energy emits no greenhouse gases and could potentially supply the planet with a “near limitless” mount of sustainable energy. But so far, no experiment, including JET’s, has been able to generate energy that is required to create the fusion reaction, according to researchers’ findings.
But JET’s most recent experiment suggests that a future experiment using the same fuel mix and technology the laboratory used, like what could be done with the ITER, a $22 billion international project in France, could have such an outcome.
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