The world’s largest operating experimental nuclear fusion reactor was inaugurated Friday in Japan, a technology that is in its infancy but touted by some as the answer to humanity’s future energy needs.
The world’s largest operating experimental nuclear fusion reactor was inaugurated Friday in Japan, a technology that is in its infancy but touted by some as the answer to humanity’s future energy needs.
Fusion differs from fission, the technique currently used in nuclear power plants, by fusing two atomic nuclei together instead of splitting one.
The goal of the JT-60SA reactor is to study the feasibility of fusion as a safe, large-scale, carbon-free net power source, with more energy generated than is needed to produce it.
The six-story machine, located in a hangar in Naka, north of Tokyo, includes a donut-shaped “tokamak” container intended to hold swirling plasma heated to 200 million degrees Celsius (360 million degrees Fahrenheit).
It is a joint project between the European Union and Japan, and is the precursor to its big brother in France, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), currently under construction.
The ultimate goal of both projects is to cause hydrogen nuclei to fuse into the heavier element, helium, releasing energy in the form of light and heat and mimicking the process that takes place in the interior of the sun.
ITER researchers, over budget, behind schedule and facing major technical problems, hope to achieve the holy grail of nuclear fusion technology, net power.
Chart comparing nuclear fusion to fission, two physical processes that produce enormous amounts of energy and yield millions of times more energy than other energy sources.
Sam Davis, deputy project manager of the JT-60SA, said the device “will bring us closer to fusion energy.”
“This is the result of a collaboration between more than 500 scientists and engineers and more than 70 companies across Europe and Japan,” Davis said at the inauguration Friday.
EU Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson said the JT-60SA was “the most advanced tokamak in the world,” calling the start of operations “a milestone in the history of fusion.”
“Fusion has the potential to become a key part of the energy mix in the second half of this century,” Simson added.
The “net energy gain” feat was achieved last December at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States, home to the world’s largest laser.
The US facility uses a different method than ITER and JT-60SA, known as inertial confinement fusion, in which high-energy lasers are aimed simultaneously into a thimble-sized cylinder. sew containing hydrogen.
The US government called the result a “historic achievement” in the quest for a clean, unlimited source of energy and in ending dependence on carbon-emitting fossil fuels that cause climate change as well as geopolitical upheaval.
Unlike fission, fusion carries no risk of a catastrophic nuclear accident – like the one seen at Fukushima in Japan in 2011 – and produces far less radioactive waste than current power plants, its supporters say.
© 2023 AFP
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