Recently scientists in South Korea have announced that they set a new record for length of time they were able to sustain 100 million degrees celsius which is about 7 times the heat of the core of our sun. Nuclear fusion seeks to mimic the reaction that the sun and other stars make to shine. They do this by fusing two large atoms to unleash large amounts of clean energy.
The most common way to achieve nuclear fusion uses a donut shaped reactor called tokamak in which hydrogen variants are heated to extraordinarily high temperatures to create a plasma. The high temperatures and high density plasma allow reactions to last much longer and are vital for the future of nuclear fusion reactors, said Si-Woo Yoon, director of the KSTAR Research Center at the Korean Institute of Fusion Energy (KFE), which achieved the new record. Sustaining such high temperatures is difficult to accomplish due to the unstable nature of plasma which is why the newest record is so important.
The previous record was able to hold 100 million celsius for 31 seconds which was set by the same reactor in 2021.The breakthrough is a small but impressive step on the long road to a source of near-unlimited clean energy. Since about 70 years ago scientists have been trying to harness the power of nuclear fusion. They try to do this by fusing hydrogen atoms to make helium under extremely high pressures and temperatures, then the so-called main-sequence stars convert matter into light and heat, generating enormous amounts of energy without producing greenhouse gasses or long-lasting radioactive waste. So far no person has been able to create a reactor that is able to put out more energy than it takes in but scientists hope this will change eventually.
Cooking plasma to these high temperatures is the relatively easy part but finding a way to corral it so that it doesn’t burn through the reactor, without also ruining the fusion process, is tricky. Lasers or magnetic fields help avoid things like that from happening. The main reason there is a new world record for holding the temperature is because they replaced carbon with tungsten to improve the efficiency of the tokamak. The limits of fusion reactors has likely not been reached because according to space.com, “KSTAR scientists are aiming to push the reactor to sustain temperatures of 180 million F for 300 seconds by 2026.” This previous source also believes that the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) will commission one by 2035.
With nuclear fusion on the horizon of being a new potential source of limitless clean energy it becomes ever more possible to fight against climate change. While this technology is not net positive yet it could be one of the biggest contributors to clean, cheap and plentiful energy in the near future.
