2023-12-04 03:32:41
December 3, 2023, 7:32 PM
It is the great dream of those who seek reproduce on Earth what happens inside the Sun: nuclear fusion.
The technology is in its infancy, but some consider it the answer to humanity’s future energy needs.
And a key step on that path was taken this Friday, with the inauguration in Japan of the JT-60SA device, the most powerful experimental nuclear fusion reactor in operation in the world.
Which is nuclear fusion
Unlike fission, which is the technique currently used in nuclear power plants, fusion fuses two atomic nuclei instead of splitting one.
The ultimate goal is causing hydrogen nuclei to fuse into a heavier element, helium, releasing energy in the form of light and heatimitating the process that takes place inside the Sun.
In other words, the idea is to obtain energy by producing an “artificial mini star” on Earth.
Unlike fission, fusion does not carry the risk of catastrophic nuclear accidents like the one that occurred in Fukushima, Japan, in 2011.
EUROfusion, a consortium of 31 laboratories in Europe that contributes to the project, cites among the advantages of fusion that the required fuel is abundant and this avoids “the risk of geopolitical conflicts” in addition to not producing greenhouse gases.
How the fusion is achieved
It was already in the 1950s that Soviet researchers Andrei Sakharov and Igor Tamm designed the first magnetic confinement fusion device or “tokamak”.
The term “tokamak” is the acronym of a Russian expression that means “toroidal chamber with magnetic coils.”
The JT-60SA is a tokamak or toroidal (donut-shaped) device, which runs on hydrogen.
The reactor inaugurated in Japan is the most powerful fusion device to date that uses magnetic confinement to study the operation of plasma.
In the tokamak there is a donut-shaped vacuum chamber, and magnets that generate a magnetic field.
Hydrogen gas is subjected to extreme heat and pressure until it turns into plasma, a hot, electrically charged gas.
In the case of the JT-60SA, the gas will be heated to 200 million °C and magnetically confined for up to 100 seconds with the help of a powerful magnetic system composed of 28 superconducting coils operating in different parts of the machine, as explained by the EUROfusion consortium.
The energized plasma particles collide and heat up. Temperatures inside a tokamak must reach about 150 million °C to convert gas to plasma and for the fusion reaction to occur.
In these conditions, Highly energized particles, instead of repelling each other as they naturally do when they collide, fuse, and this fusion releases enormous amounts of energy.
The walls of the tokamak are covered on the inside by coils that generate a magnetic field that manages to keep the plasma confined.
Getty Images The tokamak has a donut-shaped vacuum chamber and magnets that generate a magnetic field.
The knowledge gained from the reactor in Japan will be shared with the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the largest international experiment in this field, which is located in France and is still under construction.
It is hoped that these experiments will ultimately help scientists design future fusion power plants.
How important is the plant inaugurated in Japan
The plant is located at Japan’s National Institute of Quantum Science and Technology (QST) in the town of Naka, north of Tokyo.
The goal of the JT-60SA reactor is to investigate the viability of fusion as a large-scale, carbon-free energy source.
The goal is to obtain safe “net” energy, that is, it generates more energy than is used to produce it.
The plant is a joint project of the European Union and Japan.
Sam Davis, deputy project leader for JT-60SA, said the reactor will “get us closer to fusion energy.”
“It is the result of a collaboration between more than 500 scientists and engineers and more than 70 companies from all over Europe and Japan.“said Davis at the inauguration on Friday, in statements reported by the AFP agency.
It is estimated that the total cost of the project for the construction phase is around 560 million euros in current values, distributed between Europe and Japan.
How far are we from fusion at scale?
In December 2022, the net energy gain was achieved at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States, where the world’s largest laser is located.
The US facility uses a different method than ITER and JT-60SA known as inertial confinement fusionin which high-energy lasers are simultaneously directed at a cylinder containing hydrogen.
The US government called the result a “historic achievement” in the search for a clean, unlimited energy source.
However, the experiment managed to produce only enough energy to boil 15 to 20 kettles and required US$3.5 billion.
The experiment showed that science works. But the technology must be perfected and made cheaper, and the amount of energy it generates will have to be increased significantly.
The European Union’s Energy Commissioner, Kadri Simson, said at the inauguration of the JT-60SA this Friday that it is “the most advanced tokamak in the world” and described the start of its operations as “a milestone in the history of fusion.” .
“Fusion has the potential to become a key component of the energy mix in the second half of this century“Simson added.
BBC
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