They multiply by ten the temperature of the Sun

power plants fuse isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium, and tritium to safely release large amounts of energy and without producing dangerous radioactive waste, a process that they take as an example of the Sun. However, the only one capable of doing it with this fuel so far is the British JET (Joint European Torus).

This plant has set a precedent for the creation and commissioning of the largest nuclear fusion reactor of the great world powers (except China), ITER, which is being built in the French city of Cadarache. Scientists from around the world work on the JET reactor to make technological advances in the field of fusion power.

Thanks to this incessant work in search of innovation, they have taken a big step, changing the carbon lining of the plasma canister to a mixture of beryllium and tungsten. This provides a number of important advantages. For example, metallic tungsten has more resistance, which makes it JET has managed to reach a temperature ten times higher than that of the center of the Sunreleasing a record amount of fusion energy.

Before that change, JET itself had set a record last century with a plasma that was capable of releasing 22 megajoules of energy, about four times more than the Sun. However, now they have been able to double that figuregenerating stable plasmas with deuterium and tritium fuel that have produced 59 megajoules of fusion energy for 5 secondsaccording to Chain BE.

ITER will produce ten times more energy

However, this reactor has a major weak point: the installation is not large enough to release more energy than is generated by the heating systems. This problem will be the one to be solved by the ITER fusion reactor, which is nearing completion of its construction.

Sibylle Günter, scientific director of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Germany, assures that these JET advances “are an important step towards ITERbecause what we’ve learned in recent months will make it easier for us to plan experiments with fusion plasmas that generate much more energy than it takes to heat them.” It is expected that this can release ten times more energy than that fed to the plasma in terms of heating energy from the deuterium and tritium fuel.