The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak generates and sustains plasma for nearly seven minutes – four times as long as its previous record
It uses powerful magnetic fields to confine super-hot plasma, forcing hydrogen to combine into heavier atoms and releasing energy in the process
China’s “artificial sun” set a world record on Wednesday night by generating and maintaining extremely hot, highly confined plasma for nearly seven minutes.
The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) in the city of Hefei in eastern China generated and sustained plasma for 403 seconds, breaking its previous record of 101 seconds in 2017 and marking another key step towards building high-efficiency, low-cost thermonuclear fusion reactors.
“The main significance of this new breakthrough lies in its ‘high-confinement mode’, under which the temperature and density of the plasma increase significantly,” said Song Yuntao, director of the Institute of Plasma Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which built EAST.
Microsoft agrees to buy electricity generated from Sam Altman-backed fusion company Helion in 2028
Microsoft said Wednesday it has signed a power purchase agreement with nuclear fusion startup Helion to buy electricity from it in 2028.
The deal is a vote of confidence for fusion, which has thus far not been commercialized.
Silicon Valley insider Sam Altman has invested $375 million into Helion, the largest investment he personally has ever made. His other big bet is artificial intelligence company OpenAI, in which Mirosoft is a large investor.
raklian wrote: ↑Wed May 10, 2023 1:23 pmMicrosoft agrees to buy electricity generated from Sam Altman-backed fusion company Helion in 2028
Microsoft said Wednesday it has signed a power purchase agreement with nuclear fusion startup Helion to buy electricity from it in 2028.
The deal is a vote of confidence for fusion, which has thus far not been commercialized.
Silicon Valley insider Sam Altman has invested $375 million into Helion, the largest investment he personally has ever made. His other big bet is artificial intelligence company OpenAI, in which Mirosoft is a large investor.
A Chinese-made fusion reactor is creating breakdowns – Thai scientists are delighted
Published: 5:00pm, 11 May, 2023
Scientists in Thailand have begun generating hydrogen plasma with the help of a device known as a tokamak, recently donated by China, in a bid to position the region as a hub for research on clean fusion energy.
The team said they were confident the device – known as Thailand Tokamak-1 (TT-1) – will reach its full capacity this month, opening the door for research, and the possibility of further raising the temperature inside the machine.
A tokamak – a doughnut-shaped device built to harness the energy of fusion – produces an extremely powerful magnetic field to contain and control hydrogen gas that is 10 times hotter than the core of the sun.
To produce commercial energy, future fusion power plants will need to achieve temperatures of 100 million degrees C. To do so requires careful control of the plasma. In a study published in the journal Nuclear Fusion, researchers refined operating conditions to achieve the necessary temperatures in a compact spherical tokamak device called ST40.
This device is unique; it is much smaller and has a more spherical plasma than other fusion devices. To achieve these results, the researchers used an approach similar to past "supershots" that produced more than 10 million watts of fusion power in the TFTR tokamak in the 1990s.
It's starting to look like the 2030's will be the decade commercial fusion may actually take off, much earlier than anticipated.
Zap Energy lands $5M federal grant and ‘vote of confidence’ in pursuit of fusion power
The Seattle area’s Zap Energy will receive $5 million from a newly launched federal program supporting the commercial development of fusion power.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program announced Wednesday that it was divvying up $46 million among eight commercial fusion ventures in the U.S.
Zap is developing sheared-flow-stabilized Z-pinch fusion technology. The company’s device drives electric currents through a filament of superheated material called plasma. The current creates powerful magnetic fields around the plasma, compressing the material and producing conditions that are sufficient for creating fusion reactions that generate energy.
Zap set a goal of reaching breakeven this year, though Shumlak admitted on Wednesday that the time frame “is going to be challenging.”
But achieving commercial energy production by the end of the decade is tenable, he said. “We’re making really strong progress and proving out some of the scaling.”
TransAlta, the company that operates Washington’s last operating coal plant, is ceasing operations in 2025. Zap is working with the company to determine if it could locate its fusion plant at the southwest Washington site.
Some of the facility’s equipment and workforce could be adapted for fusion. “We’re just replacing the coal burner with another heating source,” Shumlak said.
Baby Fusion Reactor Less Than A Meter Wide Tops 100 Million°C by Rachael Funnel
June 2, 2023
Introduction:
(IFL Science)Temperatures seven times hotter than the center of the Sun have been achieved in a nuclear reactor that’s less than a meter (3 feet) wide. Ions inside the spherical Tokamak ST40 soared to over 100 million degrees Celsius, breaking the record for this kind of reactor.
One hundred million degrees Celsius (around 180 million degrees Fahrenheit) had only previously been achieved in much larger reactors requiring a lot more power. It’s a momentous achievement as it demonstrates the right conditions for fusion can be created in more compact reactors like ST40, requiring less energy to run.
“While national laboratories have reported plasma temperatures above 100 [million] degrees in conventional tokamaks at least 15 times larger, Tokamak Energy’s milestone was achieved in five years in a compact spherical tokamak," Stuart White at Tokamak Energy told IFLScience. "The optimal technical approach: Spherical tokamaks maximise fusion power with higher efficiency, [and] compared to conventional tokamaks, spherical tokamaks reduce [capital expenditures] and [operational expenditures].”
Generally speaking, it’s more challenging to achieve fusion in a smaller reactor compared to a bigger one. To understand why, let’s first do a quick recap on nuclear fusion.
Fusion occurs when two atoms combine, releasing enormous amounts of energy. This is because inside each atom is a nucleus that’s orbited by electrons and contains protons and neutrons. When you slam two atoms together with enough force, their nuclei combine, releasing vast amounts of energy.
(Tokamak Energy) Dr Fulvio Militello, Director of Tokamak Science and MAST-U (Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak – Upgrade) at UKAEA, said: “Fusion energy could be transformative for energy security and is important in the long-term fight against climate change. The ground-breaking research being done in the UK and with our partners across the globe, aims to make fusion energy a reality. We congratulate Tokamak Energy on reaching this significant milestone.”
Stanley Kaye, Director of Research at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, said: “Fusion energy research has had several breakthroughs in the last few years; ignition in inertial confinement and sustained fusion energy production in magnetic confinement devices, indicating the scientific viability of fusion as an energy source. The attainment of fusion relevant temperatures in the ST40 spherical tokamak is yet another important step in the development of fusion energy, and especially so for compact tokamak reactor designs. Tokamak Energy and their international collaborators are to be congratulated for this achievement.”
New technique may help achieve mass production fusion energy
July 10, 2023
Fusion, which replicates the same reaction that powers the sun, has long been viewed as an ideal energy source due to its potential to be safe, clean, cheap, and reliable. Since the early 1960s, scientists have pursued the possibility of using high-powered lasers to compress thermonuclear material long enough and at high enough temperatures to trigger ignition—the point at which the resultant output of inertial fusion energy is greater than the energy delivered to the target.
Scientists achieved ignition in December 2022 at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, but many hurdles remain in making fusion energy technically and commercially viable for mass production and consumption.
Fusion, which replicates the same reaction that powers the sun, has long been viewed as an ideal energy source due to its potential to be safe, clean, cheap, and reliable.
Since the early 1960s, scientists have pursued the possibility of using high-powered lasers to compress thermonuclear material long enough and at high enough temperatures to trigger ignition—the point at which the resultant output of inertial fusion energy is greater than the energy delivered to the target.
Scientists achieved ignition in December 2022 at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, but many hurdles remain in making fusion energy technically and commercially viable for mass production and consumption.
Researchers at the University of Rochester's Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) have, for the first time, experimentally demonstrated a method called dynamic shell formation, which may help achieve the goal of creating a fusion power plant.
The researchers, including Igor Igumenshchev, a senior scientist at LLE, and Valeri Goncharov, a distinguished scientist and theory division director at LLE and an assistant professor (research) in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, discuss their findings in a paper published in Physical Review Letters.
"This experiment has demonstrated feasibility of an innovative target concept suitable for affordable, mass production for inertial fusion energy," Igumenshchev says.
US scientists repeat fusion ignition breakthrough for 2nd time
U.S. scientists at the federal Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California announced Sunday that they achieved net energy gain in a nuclear fusion reaction for a second time — this time with a higher energy yield.
Scientists at the California-based lab repeated the fusion ignition breakthrough in an experiment in the National Ignition Facility (NIF) on July 30 that produced a higher energy yield than in December, a Lawrence Livermore spokesperson said.
Helicity Fusion is developing fusion propulsion for space ships. They have built and are testing their first fusion gun and are testing it in the lab. They plan to have four fusion guns and a compressor by the end of the year. They will NOT reach fusion conditions for a few years. They plan to fly components in space by 2026.
The goal is to have multiple guns reach fusion conditions and have a fusion enabled system flying in space by 2032. They distribute and scale with the number of fusion sources (aka fusion guns).
Nuclear Fusion And The Future Of Clean Energy by Prateek Tripathi
September 30, 2023
Extract:
(Eurasia Review) For a fusion reaction to be viable for energy production, it has to be carried out in a controlled and sustainable manner, so that the energy released can be used to say, rotate a turbine which would subsequently generate electricity.
The efficiency of a fusion reaction is given by a quantity called the Gain defined as: Output Energy/Input Energy
The objective is to achieve a gain greater than 1. However, this has been notoriously difficult to implement practically. This is primarily because to achieve fusion, the two constituent nuclei must first combine, which requires overcoming their mutual electrostatic repulsion stemming from the fact that they are both positively charged. This has given rise to different approaches to achieving fusion.
…
In the case of the Sun, the atoms get stripped of their electrons and converted into positively charged ions due to extremely high temperatures, resulting in a dense soup of ions and electrons called a plasma. In these conditions, it is possible for the ions to acquire a high enough velocity (kinetic energy) to overcome their electrostatic repulsion and allow fusion to occur. This is essentially the process used in fusion reactors, with the difference being that now the extreme temperatures must be created artificially. There are two primary ways of achieving this.
1. Magnetic confinement …
2. Inertial confinement…
See linked article for brief description of these two methods. The article also goes on to further describe recent breakthroughs at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. The emergence of India in the experimental development of fusion energy is also briefly discussed.
weatheriscool wrote: ↑Sat Sep 30, 2023 4:24 pm
I think fusion will probably save humanity from extiction level global warming...It working along side solar, wind and hydro.
Study after study shows that the massive, exponential increases we're seeing in solar and wind are by far the quickest, cheapest, and best ways to decarbonise electricity. I don't know why you maintain this belief that fusion will come to our rescue. It might provide a nice bonus, but it won't be the main contributor to net zero.
Over 43 startups companies are working on nuclear fusion and they have received over $6 billion in funding. This does not include the international and national Tokomak fusion programs.
The IEEE Spectrum reviewed five of the nuclear fusion companies that are working on Aneutronic fusion.
1. TAE (TriAlpha Energy) is working towards Proton-Boron fusion.
2. Helion Energy is developing Helium 3 fusion. They plan to breed Helium 3 in their reactors.
3. HB11 Energy is developing laser proton boron fusion.
4. Marvel Energy is developing proton boron fusion
5. Princeton Fusion Systems
TAE Technologies, (TriAlpha Energy), has the most funding for its aneutronic fusion program. The company started 1998 and has received US $1.25 billion, according to CEO Michl Binderbauer. TAE’s is reacting hydrogen and boron, a mix also known as proton-B11 (PB11). When fused, hydrogen-boron releases three positively charged helium-4 nuclei, known as alpha particles. TAE design confines plasma—fuel so hot that electrons are stripped away from the atoms, forming an ionized gas—via a technique called a field-reversed configuration (FRC).
Japan’s JT-60SA tokamak nuclear fusion reactor has achieved first plasma which makes it the world’s largest operating nuclear fusion reactor. The JT-60SA uses magnetic fields from superconducting coils to contain a blazingly hot cloud of ionized gas, or plasma, within a doughnut-shaped vacuum vessel, in hope of coaxing hydrogen nuclei to fuse and release energy. The four-story-high machine is designed to hold a plasma heated to 200 million degrees Celsius for about 100 seconds, far longer than previous large tokamaks.
It will take another 2 years before JT-60SA produces the long-lasting plasmas needed for meaningful physics experiments, says Hiroshi Shirai, leader of the project for QST.
Japan’s JT-60SA tokamak nuclear fusion reactor has achieved first plasma which makes it the world’s largest operating nuclear fusion reactor. The JT-60SA uses magnetic fields from superconducting coils to contain a blazingly hot cloud of ionized gas, or plasma, within a doughnut-shaped vacuum vessel, in hope of coaxing hydrogen nuclei to fuse and release energy. The four-story-high machine is designed to hold a plasma heated to 200 million degrees Celsius for about 100 seconds, far longer than previous large tokamaks.
It will take another 2 years before JT-60SA produces the long-lasting plasmas needed for meaningful physics experiments, says Hiroshi Shirai, leader of the project for QST.
Another milestone has been reached:
The World's Biggest Nuclear Fusion Reactor Just Came Online December 4, 2023
Introduction:
(AFP via Science Alert) The world's biggest experimental nuclear fusion reactor in operation was inaugurated in Japan on Friday, a technology in its infancy but billed 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 instead of splitting one.
The goal of the JT-60SA reactor is to investigate the feasibility of fusion as a safe, large-scale and carbon-free source of net energy – with more energy generated than is put into producing it.
The six-storey-high machine, in a hangar in Naka north of Tokyo, comprises a donut-shaped "tokamak" vessel set to contain swirling plasma heated up 200 million degrees Celsius (360 million degrees Fahrenheit).
It is a joint project between the European Union and Japan, and is the forerunner for its big brother in France, the under-construction International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).
