SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
The UK’s 40-year-old fusion reactor achieved a world record for energy output in its final runs before being shut down for good, scientists have announced.
The Joint European Torus (JET) in Oxfordshire began operating in 1983. When running, it was temporarily the hottest point in the solar system, reaching 150 million°C.
The reactor’s previous record was a reaction lasting for 5 seconds in 2021, producing 59 megajoules of heat energy. But in its final tests in late 2023, it surpassed this by sustaining a reaction for 5.2 seconds while also reaching 69 megajoules of output, using just 0.2 milligrams of fuel.
[...] JET forged together atoms of deuterium and tritium – two stable isotopes of hydrogen – in plasma to create helium, while also releasing a vast amount of energy. This is the same reaction that powers our sun. It was a type of fusion reactor known as a tokamak, which contains plasma in a donut shape using rings of electromagnets.
Scientists ran the last experiments with deuterium-tritium fuel at JET in October last year and other experiments continued until December. But the machine has now been shut down for good and it is being decommissioned over the next 16 years.
“It’s great that it’s gone out with a little flourish,” says Matthews. “It’s got a noble history. It’s served its time and they’re going to squeeze a bit more information out of it during its decommissioning period as well. So it’s not something to be sad about; it’s something to be celebrated.”
A larger and more modern replacement for JET, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in France, is nearing completion and its first experiments are due to start in 2025.
[...] Another reactor using the same design, the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) device, recently managed to sustain a reaction for 30 seconds at temperatures in excess of 100 million°C.
(Score: 5, Informative) by quietus on Monday February 12 2024, @04:37PM
Claiming it's the UK's fusion reactor is a bit a stretch. While it's located in the UK, it was actually funded and run by originally Euratom since 1978, with the European Consortium for the Development of Fusion Energy (Eurofusion), headquartered in Germany, later took over the experiments.
That little nitpick aside, those JET experiments weren' t about the energy output, but rather about controlling the created plasma, developing the expertise to continuously feed that plasma, harnessing (converting) the heat exhaust from the plasma, and studying the effect of fusion-born high energy neutrons on the cooling system and electronics (in collaboration with CERN [web.cern.ch] (no direct info, just interesting link).
For those interested, more info here [euro-fusion.org].