1y ago

Nuclear fusion experiment sets record for time at 100 million degrees Celsius

edition.cnn.com

‘Artificial sun’ sets record for time at 100 million degrees Celsius in latest advance for nuclear fusion | CNN

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1y ago

‘Artificial sun’ sets record for time at 100 million degrees Celsius in latest advance for nuclear fusion

edition.cnn.com /2024/04/01/climate/nuclear-fusion-record-korea-climate-intl/index.html

34 comments

KSTAR, KFE’s fusion research device which it refers to as an “artificial sun,” managed to sustain plasma with temperatures of 100 million degrees for 48 seconds during tests between December 2023 and February 2024, beating the previous record of 30 seconds set in 2021.
Wait, but hold on...
The achievement was announced on Friday by Gong Xianzu, a researcher at the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) at the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in China’s Anhui Province. The device, which replicates the atom-building process that occurs at the center of stars and gives them their luminosity and warmth, held plasma at a temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds and at the even hotter temperature of 160 million degrees Celsius for another 20 seconds.
The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), a nuclear fusion reactor research facility, ran at 70 million degrees Celsius for as long as 1,056 seconds (17 minutes, 36 seconds), Xinhua reported.
I guess technically 120 million != 100 million...
- I'm honestly more impressed about that last line, running at 70 million for 17.5 minutes. Duration/stability being the key to this tech, that's pretty impressive.
  
  That is the point, not to reach 100 millon dimming meanwhile the lights in the rest of the country. Stability continued, not only for few minutes and positive energy production is the goal, not archived yet, nor in the next decade.
- Well, clearly, to be China is against the rules.
It feels like there's a lot more positive stories coming out about fusion lately :)
- Shoot, maybe it's finally 9 years away
  
  Let's call it 9 years away from next year
  
  The only thing fusion can't do is leave the lab.
The goal is to get it as hot as McDonald's coffee
- Just hot enough to fuse labias shut
In fusion reactors there is a lot of talk about the temperatures they reach and the time it manages to work, but all this corresponds more to propaganda publications. The real problem is achieving net energy production and at this point they are not much further ahead than the fusion reactor built by a boy in a garage a few years ago. Achieving nuclear fusion is not that complicated, it is complicated to do it by extracting more energy than invested and this is still a minimum of 10 years away.
- The main parameter that determines if a fusion reactor generates net power is called its triple product, equal to the product of the plasma density, temperature, and confinement time. So setting records of time spent at operating temperatures is making important progress towards net power production.
Does this contribute to warming the planet? 😁
- It warms one small part of the planet by about 100 million degrees.
  
  It really throws off the average though
- No, nuclear is a viable addition to other clean energy initiatives.
  
  Particularly nuclear fusion, which doesn’t generate long-lived radioactive isotopes as byproducts of energy production. Nuclear fission still has a place to be sure, but once we crack the dilemmas with fusion all bets are off when it comes to generating huge amounts of clean energy.
- No.
- Hopefully it will contribute to warm up everyones home one day.
- Testing and stuff probably does by a tiny fraction, because they need to use insane amounts of power to get it started which is probably produced by coal/oil.
  But once it's actually working and producing more power than it consumes it will be the best solution to stopping greenhouse gases for energy production. It would be the end of gas/oil/coal in the energy sector. Probably wouldn't even need to use solar or wind anymore.

34 comments