China’s 2027 fusion ambition leaves U.S. in the dust

China’s latest fusion project promises to generate five times more power than it consumes, setting a blistering pace unmatched by its American rivals. If successful, this could rewrite the playbook on fusion energy and edge the world closer to a carbon-free future.

At the heart of this endeavor lies the Burning Plasma Experimental Superconducting Tokamak—BEST for short—a doughnut-shaped vessel where hydrogen isotopes collide at temperatures hotter than the sun’s surface. I still recall the first time I learned that fusion mimics the processes powering stars; it felt like peeking behind the universe’s curtain. 

Thanks to superconducting magnets and advanced cooling systems, the BEST reactor is engineered to sustain plasma long enough to achieve a genuine net energy gain, rather than simply breaking even.

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Fusion Plant Design

A fusion energy firm has revealed the first details of its pilot plant design. Tokamak Energy claims that its pilot plant will be capable of generating 800 megawatts (MW) of fusion power and 85MW of net electricity.

This will reportedly be enough to power and heat more than 70,000 American homes.

Initial designs specify an aspect ratio of 2.0, a plasma major radius of 4.25 meters, and a magnetic field of 4.25 Tesla, as well as a liquid lithium tritium breeding blanket, according to Tokamak Energy.   READ MORE...

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Fusion Energy - TOKAMAK

(Bloomberg) -- The executive in charge of the world’s biggest fusion-energy experiment is trying to rehire retired engineers, who possess knowledge that’s critical to advancing an unfinished reactor in southern France.

The 35-nation International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, is seeking to reboot the fusion project after its supply chains were disrupted by war and pandemic. Delays mean ITER’s efforts to harness the mechanics of the Sun’s clean energy on Earth could be overtaken by more nimble startups.

“What it takes to integrate a facility like ITER and design it from scratch has been lost,” said Pietro Barabaschi, ITER’s director general. “The knowledge is available somewhere but it is not consolidated. We have to get some retired people on board again.”

ITER revealed the knowledge gap Monday at an International Atomic Energy Agency conference in London, where hundreds of scientists and engineers are convening to assess the state of an industry drawing investment from billionaires including Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. 

It’s likely to pile more pressure on the star-crossed government project, now facing competition from dozens of privately funded startups.  READ MORE...

Fusion Energy Unchained

Illustration of cloud-like ionized plasma in the ITER fusion reactor tokamak. Credit: ITER

Physicists at EPFL, within a large European collaboration, have revised one of the fundamental laws that has been foundational to plasma and fusion research for over three decades, even governing the design of megaprojects like ITER. The update demonstrates that we can actually safely utilize more hydrogen fuel in fusion reactors, and therefore obtain more energy than previously thought.

Fusion is one of the most promising future energy sources . It involves two atomic nuclei merging into one, thereby releasing enormous amounts of energy. In fact, we experience fusion every day: the Sun’s warmth comes from hydrogen nuclei fusing into heavier helium atoms.

There is currently an international fusion research megaproject called ITER that seeks to replicate the fusion processes of the Sun to create energy on the Earth. Its goal is to generate high-temperature plasma that provides the right environment for fusion to occur, producing energy.

Plasmas — an ionized state of matter similar to a gas – are made up of positively charged nuclei and negatively charged electrons, and are almost a million times less dense than the air we breathe. Plasmas are created by subjecting “the fusion fuel” – hydrogen atoms – to extremely high temperatures (10 times that of the core of the Sun), forcing electrons to separate from their atomic nuclei. In a fusion reactor, the process takes place inside a donut-shaped (“toroidal”) structure called a “tokamak.”  READ MORE...

Fusion Reaction Energy

Magnetic fusion reactors contain super hot plasma in a donut-shaped container called a tokamak.

Nuclear fusion hit a milestone thanks to better reactor walls – this engineering advance is building toward reactors of the future.

Scientists in England have set a new record for the quantity of energy generated during a controlled, sustained fusion reaction. The creation of 59 megajoules of energy over five seconds at the Joint European Torus – or JET – experiment in England has been dubbed a “breakthrough” by certain media organizations and has sparked physicists’ interest. However, a frequent saying about fusion energy generation is that it is “always 20 years away.”

We are a nuclear physicist and a nuclear engineer working to develop controlled nuclear fusion for power generation.

The JET finding represents significant progress in the understanding of fusion physics. But, perhaps more crucially, it demonstrates that the new materials used to create the fusion reactor’s inner walls performed as expected. The fact that the new wall structure functioned so well sets these findings apart from past milestones and brings magnetic fusion closer to reality.

Fusing particles together
Nuclear fusion is the merging of two atomic nuclei into one compound nucleus. This nucleus then breaks apart and releases energy in the form of new atoms and particles that speed away from the reaction. A fusion power plant would capture the escaping particles and use their energy to generate electricity.

There are a few different ways to safely control fusion on Earth. Our research focuses on the approach taken by JET – using powerful magnetic fields to confine atoms until they are heated to a high enough temperature for them to fuse.

The fuel for current and future reactors are two different isotopes of hydrogen – meaning they have the one proton, but different numbers of neutrons – called deuterium and tritium. Normal hydrogen has one proton and no neutrons in its nucleus. Deuterium has one proton and one neutron while tritium has one proton and two neutrons.  READ MORE...