France has upped the ante in the quest for fusion power by maintaining a plasma reaction for over 22 minutes – a new record. The milestone was reached on February 12 at the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA) WEST Tokamak reactor.
France has upped the ante in the quest for fusion power by maintaining a plasma reaction for over 22 minutes – a new record.
The tricky bit isn’t to get atoms to fuse. That’s a fairly simple lab bench experiment. The problem is creating the right conditions where the fusion reaction is self-sustaining, with a net energy output. That means reaching temperatures of between 100 – 150 million °C (180 – 270 million °F, or 3-5 times hotter than the Sun’s core), a pressure of five to 10 atmospheres at the point of reaction, and keeping a high-energy plasma stable for at least 10 seconds.
Keep a stable reaction while pulling energy from it (and pull enough energy so it doesn’t overheat and collapse the superconducting magnetic coils but not so much energy that the fusion stalls)
The tricky bit isn’t to get atoms to fuse. That’s a fairly simple lab bench experiment. The problem is creating the right conditions where the fusion reaction is self-sustaining, with a net energy output. That means reaching temperatures of between 100 – 150 million °C (180 – 270 million °F, or 3-5 times hotter than the Sun’s core), a pressure of five to 10 atmospheres at the point of reaction, and keeping a high-energy plasma stable for at least 10 seconds.
Keep a stable reaction while pulling energy from it (and pull enough energy so it doesn’t overheat and collapse the superconducting magnetic coils but not so much energy that the fusion stalls)