Nuclear Fusion, New European Record

Experimental JET reactor produced 69 megajoules of energy in 5 seconds

Nuclear fusion still has many steps to go before it becomes a usable source for clean energy, but important steps have been taken in recent years. Now the European JET reactor has set a new record with 69 megajoules of energy produced in 5 seconds.

This was announced by Eurofusion, a European consortium comprising 27 EU countries, as well as Switzerland and the UK. The JET (Joint European Torus) that belongs to the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) is located in Calham, Oxford.

The facility “demonstrated the ability to reliably generate fusion energy” and surpassed the 59 megajoules generated by the same equipment in 2022. The current 69 megajoules were produced using 0.21 milligrams of fuel and are equivalent to the energy released by burning 2 kilograms of coal.

The record, announced on February 8, was set on October 3, 2023, shortly before the final decommissioning of the tokamak reactor, a toroidal (doughnut-shaped) machine where the generated magnetic field can contain plasma. This state is obtained when the fusion process is triggered by bringing a mixture of deuterium and tritium to 100 million degrees.

The most globally proven approach to fusion is the use of two isotopes of hydrogen: deuterium and tritium. When they merge, they produce helium and release large amounts of energy. It is the instability of these “restraining” magnetic fields that is one of the greatest problems to be solved for the development of this type of energy. Apparently, it could be used in manufacturing decades from now. However, the current experiment is a step towards future projects.

“New energy records successfully demonstrate scenarios for future fusion equipment, such as ITER and DEMO. This gives great confidence in the development of fusion energy,” said Eurofusion program manager (CEO) Professor Ambrogio Fasoli. “In addition, for the new record, we achieved unprecedented results and deepened our understanding of the physics of thermonuclear fusion.”