Where are we at with nuclear fusion?
As research and investments in the field advance, nuclear fusion might be at the forefront of becoming the dominant energy source by the end of the century.
Last month, Japan inaugurated the world’s largest operational experimental nuclear fusion reactor. The JT-60SA reactor aims to investigate the feasibility of fusion as a safe, large-scale, and carbon-free nett energy source.
The six-story-high machine, housed in a hangar in Naka, north of Tokyo, is a collaboration between the European Union and Japan, and it serves as a forerunner to its larger brother in France, the under-construction International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).
The ultimate goal of both projects is to replicate the reaction that powers the sun to release energy in the form of light and heat.
Matteo Barbarino, a Nuclear Plasma Fusion Specialist at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), says it’s a dream that has only grown more compelling in the face of escalating climate change. Harnessing thermonuclear fusion has the potential to render all of our carbon-emitting coal and gas-fired plants an old memory.
Fusion power plants could provide zero-carbon electricity that runs day and night, without care for wind or weather, and the drawbacks of today’s nuclear fission plants, says Tammy Ma, the Lead for the Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) Initiative at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
It was Australian Sir Mark Oliphant who discovered fusion in 1934. As research and investments in the field advance, fusion might be at the forefront of becoming the dominant energy source – by the end of the century.
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