Record-breaking production of 59 megajoules of fusion energy using exactly the same fuel mix for future fusion power plants in the UK
If we can reproduce the way the sun makes energy, we can power the world with clean energy, that is, without greenhouse gas emissions and long-lived radioactive waste. But scientists have been unable to trigger a fusion reaction that results in a net energy gain. Turns out, it takes a lot of heat energy to force atomic nuclei to “fuse” together.
It was revealed on Wednesday that scientists in the United Kingdom had more than doubled the previous record for generating and sustaining nuclear fusion.
Whereas fusion fuses two or more atoms together, fission is the opposite; it is the process of splitting a larger atom into two or more smaller ones. Nuclear fission is the kind of energy that powers nuclear reactors around the world today. Like fusion, the heat created from splitting atoms is also used to generate energy.
A team of scientists in the village of Culham, near Oxford, were able to create a record number of 59 megajoules of fusion energy over five seconds on December 21 last year. The machine’s power can be sustained for up to five seconds.
It’s one of many hurdles that generations of fusion energy seekers have managed to overcome. The magnets were designed to create a strong field of magnetism to keep the heat out. Anything else would simply melt.
“Our experiment showed for the first time that it’s possible to have a sustained fusion process using exactly the same fuel mix planned for future fusion power plants,” Tony Donné, CEO of EUROfusion, said at a press conference.
EUROfusion, a consortium that includes 4,800 experts, students and staff from across Europe, carried out the project in partnership with the UK Atomic Energy Authority. The European Commission also contributed funding.
The fuel deuterium and tritium can produce massive amounts of energy. For example, powering the whole of current UK electrical demand for a day would require 0.5 tonnes of deuterium, which could be extracted from seawater – where its concentration is low but plentiful,” Tony Roulstone from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering told CNN.
“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, CEO of the UK Atomic Energy Authority.
While JET’s goal was to prove that nuclear fusion could be generated and sustained, ITER’s aim is to produce a tenfold return on energy, or 500 MW of fusion power from 50 MW of energy put in.
However, it’s very hard to harness nuclear fusion. Without protection the very high temperatures needed would damage the reactor that takes place, so scientists use magnetic fields to hold the heated fuel. These magnetic fields are essentially force fields that protect the surrounding material. The heated deuterium creates its own magnetic fields, which interfere with the force fields. The JET facility generated fusion in this way. The JET is almost certain to be its last iteration because of the extreme heat and pressure generated by the reaction. It is almost certainly not going to be used again.
Saint Paul-lez-Durance, France : A historical moment in the history of nuclear fusion induced in the sun and in all stars
Fossil fuel burning has increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere 50% over pre-industrial levels. The increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is changing the Earth’s climate, causing hotter temperatures, more extreme weather events and more severe droughts. If there is not enough reliable and abundant sources of energy that don’t use fossil fuels, the Climate crisis will grow and have consequences for mankind.
An energy output of 59 million joules is an impressive number, but to give it some context, this is only enough to power a typical American house for about half a day. Thus, while this recent accomplishment will not immediately result in a new power plant, it is still a welcome development for a world that is both hungry for energy and increasingly concerned about the dangers associated with traditional power generation.
Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France — From a small hill in the southern French region of Provence, you can see two suns. The one has been setting for the past four and a half billion years. Thousands of minds and hands are being used to build the other. The final rays of the sun cast a bright glow over the site of an enormous construction site that could be used to solve the most important problem in human history.
It is here, in the tiny commune of Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, that 35 countries have come together to try and master nuclear fusion, a process that occurs naturally in the sun — and all stars — but is painfully difficult to replicate on Earth.
Atomic experts don’t like to estimate when fusion energy might be available, they just joke about it being 30 years away.
It was only enough to power one house for a day, and more energy went into the process than came out of it. Yet it was a truly historic moment. It proved that nuclear fusion was indeed possible to sustain on Earth.
ITER’s director general Bernard Bigot – he says the universe is going through a hard time. When the tokamak collapses
The people working on the ITER project are undergoing a major change since the success in the UK. Their director general, Bernard Bigot (pronounced bi-GOH in French), died from illness on May 14 after leading ITER for seven years.
Before his death, Bigot shared his infectious optimism for fusion energy from his sunny office, which overlooked the shell of ITER’s own tokamak, a sci-fi like structure still under construction.
“Not anymore. Not since the Industrial Revolution and the following population explosion. Fossil fuels caused a lot of harm to the environment. And here we are now, 8 billion strong and in the middle of a drastic climate crisis,” he said.
He said there was no alternative but to stop using our current main power source. “And the best option seems to be the one the universe has been utilizing for billions of years.”
Nature repels two particles that are forced together to create fusion energy. After a small amount of fuel is injected into the tokamak, giant magnets are activated to create a plasma, the fourth state of matter, which is a bit like a gas or soup that is electrically charged.
The missing mass is converted into energy. The tokamak’s wall is lined with a blanket of neutrons,which are able to escape the Plasma and hit it. That heat can be used to warm water, create steam and turn turbines to generate power.
The stars, our sun and all of the universe’s other particles are made of a substance called plasm. Down here on Earth, it is used in neon lights and televisions, and we can see it in lightning and theaurora.
The International Iron Detector Experiment (ITER) Buildings and the Construction of the World’s Largest Nuclear Fusion Machine
ITER uses newer magnets that can last much longer, and the project aims to produce a 10-fold return on energy, generating 500 megawatts from an input of 50 megawatts.
A gram of tritium is worth $30,000. Should nuclear fusion take off, demand will go through the roof, presenting the world’s fusion masters with yet another challenge.
Across 39 building sites, the construction is incredibly complex. The main worksite is a markedly sterile environment, where tremendous components are being put into place with the help of 750-ton cranes. Workers have already put together the shell of the tokamak, but they are still awaiting some parts, including a giant magnet from Russia that will sit at the top of the machine.
The dimensions are mind-blowing. The tokamak will ultimately weigh 23,000 tons. The weight of the Eiffel towers is combined. It will comprise a million components, further differing into no fewer than 10 million smaller parts.
This powerful behemoth will be surrounded by some of the largest magnets ever created. Their staggering size — some of them have diameters of up to 24 meters — means they are are too large to transport and must be assembled on site in a giant hall.
Even the digital design of this enormous machine sits across 3D computer files that take up more than two terabytes of drive space. It would save you the same amount of space as the 160 million Word documents.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/05/world/iter-nuclear-fusion-climate-intl-cnnphotos/
ITER is a project of peace: The role of Russia, the United States, India, Japan and South Korea in the post-war world order
Thirty-five countries are collaborating on ITER, which is run by seven main members — China, the United States, the European Union, Russia, India, Japan and South Korea. The late Bigot and others tried to keep geopolitics out of ITER, but it looks like they failed.
Russia wants to change Europe with its war in Ukraine, and even challenge the post-war world order, but there are concerns about the country’s role in ITER and its potential exclusion.
The European Commission has made an exception for ITER in its sanctions despite the fact that Russia is no longer included in a number of other international scientific projects.
“Before anything around the latest Russia circumstances, that has to date never affected the collaborative spirit. I reckon that the ITER is definitely a project of peace.
“But our joint commitment remains as strong as ever. He said that politics have had virtually no impact on the project from the beginning.
“Each of the partners seems quite aware dropping the ball could easily mean the demise of the entire project. This, of course, is a tremendous responsibility.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/05/world/iter-nuclear-fusion-climate-intl-cnnphotos/
The ITER Project: Building a World Without Walls? When Stephen Hawking and the Times revealed what he would like to see in his lifetime
As the diplomacy and technology fell in step, building began. The foundations were laid in 2010 and the construction machines were switched on that year.
The scale and ambition of the ITER project may seem enormous, but it is, at the very least, a proportional response to the mess humans have made of the planet. Since 1973, global energy usage has more than doubled. It could triple by the end of the century. Humans create 70 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. Fossil fuels account for 80% of all our energy use.
Warming is causing more frequent heat waves, famine, wildfires, floods and rising sea levels in the world’s oceans. The impacts of the climate crisis are getting harder and harder to reverse as more human lives are put on the line.
When the late physicist Stephen Hawking was asked by Time in 2010 which scientific discovery he would like to see in his lifetime, he pointed to exactly this process.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/05/world/iter-nuclear-fusion-climate-intl-cnnphotos/
The Construction of the Space Center Project: The Contributions of the European Union, other countries and their contribution to the project cost of the reconstruction of the missing project
The European Union is footing 45% of the project’s ever-mounting construction costs. The other countries are making up 9% of the total. Initially, the entire construction was estimated at around 6 billion euros ($6.4 billion). Right now, the total has more than tripled to around 20 billion euros.
The 2001 predictions envisioned the first batch of plasma being produced in 2016, another missed goal. The project was thought to be dead in the water, but after Bigot took over, the project got back on track. Bigot had a reputation as a micromanager, Coblentz said, but that’s exactly what was needed to get this complicated project in order.
Coblentz said that his car was often in place until 9 or 10 p.m. at night. He always had the impression that he had to be involved in any detail that was large or small.
The announcement is scheduled to take place at a press conference in Washington, DC, at 10AM ET. You can watch it at energy.gov/live. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Arati Prabhakar are expected to speak alongside officials with the National Nuclear Security Administration and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
What happened to the first nuclear fusion experiment in the sun, a report by Chittenden, the lab at Lawrence Livermore
Tony Roulstone, a fusion expert from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, told CNN they contain the fusion reaction by bombarding the outside with lasers. “They heat up the outside; that creates a shockwave.”
The machine that generates the reaction has to undergo serious heat. The plasma needs to reach at least 150 million degrees Celsius, 10 times hotter than the core of the sun.
The process of breaking atoms helps produce energy, and by using magnets or lasers it is possible to do the same.
“At the moment we’re spending a huge amount of time and money for every experiment we do,” Chittenden said. “We need to bring the cost down by a huge factor.”
“The opposing argument is that this result is miles away from actual energy gain required for the production of electricity,” he said. It is a success of the science but long way from providing useful energy, we say.
There are very few details on how it was accomplished. The national laboratory did not confirm or deny what was reported by the Financial Times. We are not able to provide details at this time because our analysis is still ongoing. We look forward to sharing more on Tuesday when that process is complete,” Breanna Bishop, senior director of strategic communications at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, wrote to The Verge.
There will be a panel discussion and Q&A with experts from the national laboratory right after the press conference. That discussion will also be livestreamed at energy.gov/live and is scheduled to start at 10:30AM ET.
The result of the experiment would be a massive step in a decadeslong quest to unleash an infinite source of clean energy that could help end dependence on fossil fuels. Researchers for decades have attempted to recreate nuclear fusion – replicating the energy that powers the sun.
The deuterium from a glass of water, with a little tritium added, could power a house for a year. Tritium is rarer and more challenging to obtain, although it can be synthetically made.
“Unlike coal, you only need a small amount of hydrogen, and it is the most abundant thing found in the universe,” Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct and a former chief energy technologist at Lawrence Livermore, told CNN. “Hydrogen is found in water so the stuff that generates this energy is wildly unlimited and it is clean.”
While there’s many more steps until this can be commercially viable, it’s essential for scientists to show that they can create more energy than they started with. Otherwise, it doesn’t make much sense for it to be developed.
Climate change at the National Ignition Facility in Los Alamos, California: Where are we coming from, where do we need to go?
In the US, much of the work is happening at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, in a building that spans the size of three football fields.
“This will not contribute meaningfully to climate abatement in the next 20-30 years,” Friedmann said. “This the difference between lighting a match and building a gas turbine.”