![]() In August 2021, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced a major breakthrough in nuclear fusion, using powerful lasers to produce 1.3 megajoules of energy – about three percent of the energy contained in one kilogram of crude oil. The UK has also recently launched the STEP project ( Spherical Tokamak for Electricity Production), aiming to develop a reactor that will connect to the national energy grid in the 2040s.Īnd in the US, California-based TAE Technologies, the world’s largest private fusion company, has announced it will have a commercial nuclear fusion power plant by 2030, after raising $880 million in funding. The company has said that it is on track to produce commercial electricity from nuclear fusion by 2030. The system uses tokamaks and high temperature superconductor magnets. Entrepreneurs at Tokamak Energy, based in a small railway town in southern England, have attracted venture capital – and £10 million from the UK government - for their space-saving and cost-effective solution. Nuclear fusion technology is also moving closer to commercial use. In China, in January 2022, the EAST reactor broke the record for the longest sustained nuclear fusion with temperatures of 126 million degrees Fahrenheit - roughly five times hotter than the sun – sustained for 17 minutes.Ĭhina’s EAST reactor is being used to test the technology for the ITER reactor in the south of France, with some estimates now forecasting it could begin working as soon as 2025.Ī month later in the UK, scientists at the Joint European Torus laboratory (JET) announced they’d generated a record-breaking 59 megajoules of sustained fusion energy – double the previous record energy output and a further boost for their partners at the ITER project (for which it is acting as a prototype of sorts). In recent months, however new breakthroughs are making the technology more accessible than ever before. However, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project has yet to generate electricity for consumers, and critics, including the European Court of Auditors, recently warned the project could be subject to further cost increases and delays. This ‘ tokomak’ - the name given to devices which create a powerful magnetic field to confine reactive charged particles – was built in the South of France with funding from 35 countries, including the US, EU, China, Russia, India, Japan and the UK. In 1958 at an Atoms for Peace conference in Geneva, fusion research was declared an international collaborative venture, leading to the creation of the biggest prototype reactor in the world. Since the concept of nuclear fusion was discovered in the 1930s, experiments have been ongoing, and today there are around 20 fusion reactors in the world, all striving to reach the extremely high temperatures needed for long enough make fusion happen. However, creating the right conditions in a fusion reactor has proven to be a challenging and costly process. A few grams of fuels such as deuterium and tritium could produce a terajoule of energy – approximately what one person in a developed country uses over 60 years.Īdditionally, nuclear fusion does not produce carbon dioxide or long-lived nuclear waste, making it a highly sustainable option. This means that nuclear fusion has the potential to provide energy in quantities that could power homes, cities and whole countries.įuels that can be used for fusion are also widely available and can be derived from substances such as water and lithium. Nuclear fusion releases nearly four million times more energy than using coal, oil or gas, and four times as much as nuclear fission technology (in which a large atomic nucleus is split into smaller nuclei). So it’s no surprise that governments all over the world are investing in research to replicate the fusion process. On Earth, if reproduced, this reaction has the potential to produce clean, safe energy in quantities that could solve the climate crisis. The process creates a difference in mass, which is converted into energy. Recent months have seen a flurry of breakthroughs as scientists strive to replicate the reaction and harness this virtually limitless energy source.įusion is a nuclear reaction in which two or more light nuclei (in stars for example, two hydrogen nuclei) fuse together to form a single, heavy nucleus (for example a helium isotope). Nuclear fusion - the reaction that powers the sun - has the potential to unlock clean, affordable energy for planet Earth. ![]() How Close Are We To Unlocking The 'Limitless' Energy Of Nuclear Fusion? 02 June 2022 New IEF Report Warns Underinvestment Raises Spectre of Price Shocks and Volatility.Energy Security Focus of G20 Energy Ministers.Smart Energy - Transitions & Technology.Nuclear power plants are designed in such a way that they cannot form a supercritical mass of fissionable material and therefore cannot create a nuclear explosion.
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