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Clean, limitless fusion power could arrive sooner than expected
Good news, denizens of Earth: If the findings from two premier research labs are to be believed, commercial nuclear fusion is feasible—and could arrive sooner than expected.
The first breakthrough comes from Sandia National Laboratories (the same engineers who brought us the fanless heatsink). At SNL, a research team has been working on a new way of creating fusion called magnetized liner inertial fusion (MagLIF). This approach is quite similar to the National Ignition Facility at the LLNL in California, where they fuse deuterium and tritium (hydrogen isotopes) by crushing and heating the fuel with 500 trillion watts of laser power.
Probably more significant is news from the Joint European Torus (JET), a magnetic confinement fusion facility in the UK. JET is very similar to the ITER nuclear fusion reactor, an international project which is being built in the south of France.
At the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy (KFE), the KSTAR tokamak recommenced operations in December after a major upgrade to replace the…
KSTAR aims for longer plasmas
At the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy (KFE), the KSTAR tokamak recommenced operations in December after a major upgrade to replace the device's carbon divertor with a tungsten divertor.
According to an article on the KFE website, the original carbon divertors could take a thermal load of 5MW/m², whereas the tungsten divertor can take 10MW/m². The upgrade is critical to the goal of sustaining a 100-million-degree plasma for 300 seconds by 2026. Data from the operational campaign will be directly relevant to ITER, which will operate a tungsten divertor under similar plasma conditions in terms of shape and structure.
This testing campaign will continue through February 2024. Read more about the plans in this article in English on the KFE website, or in Korean in the Chosun Biz.