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Scientific American
2 days ago
- Science
- Scientific American
Record-Breaking Results Bring Fusion Power Closer to Reality
A twisting ribbon of hydrogen gas, many times hotter than the surface of the sun, has given scientists a tentative glimpse of the future of controlled nuclear fusion —a so-far theoretical source of relatively 'clean' and abundant energy that would be effectively fueled by seawater. The ribbon was a plasma inside Germany's Wendelstein 7-X, an advanced fusion reactor that set a record last May by magnetically 'bottling up' the superheated plasma for a whopping 43 seconds. That's many times longer than the device had achieved before. It's often joked that fusion is only 30 years away—and always will be. But the latest results indicate that scientists and engineers are finally gaining on that prediction. 'I think it's probably now about 15 to 20 years [away],' says University of Cambridge nuclear engineer Tony Roulstone, who wasn't involved in the Wendelstein experiments. 'The superconducting magnets [that the researchers are using to contain the plasma] are making the difference.' On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. And the latest Wendelstein result, while promising, has now been countered by British researchers. They say the large Joint European Torus (JET) fusion reactor near Oxford, England, achieved even longer containment times of up to 60 seconds in final experiments before its retirement in December 2023. These results have been kept quiet until now but are due to be published in a scientific journal soon. According to a press release from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Germany, the as yet unpublished data make the Wendelstein and JET reactors 'joint leaders' in the scientific quest to continually operate a fusion reactor at extremely high temperatures. Even so, the press release notes that JET's plasma volume was three times larger than that of the Wendelstein reactor, which would have given JET an advantage—a not-so-subtle insinuation that, all other things being equal, the German project should be considered the true leader. This friendly rivalry highlights a long-standing competition between devices called stellarators, such as the Wendelstein 7-X, and others called tokamaks, such as JET. Both use different approaches to achieve a promising form of nuclear fusion called magnetic confinement, which aims to ignite a fusion reaction in a plasma of the neutron-heavy hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium. The latest results come after the successful fusion ignition in 2022 at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) near San Francisco, which used a very different method of fusion called inertial confinement. Researchers there applied giant lasers to a pea-sized pellet of deuterium and tritium, triggering a fusion reaction that gave off more energy than it consumed. (Replications of the experiment have since yielded even more energy.) The U.S. Department of Energy began constructing the NIF in the late 1990s, with the goal to develop inertial confinement as an alternative to testing thermonuclear bombs, and research for the U.S.'s nuclear arsenal still makes up most of the facility's work. But the ignition was an important milestone on the path toward controlled nuclear fusion—a 'holy grail' of science and engineering. 'The 2022 achievement of fusion ignition marks the first time humans have been able to demonstrate a controlled self-sustained burning fusion reaction in the laboratory—akin to lighting a match and that turning into a bonfire,' says plasma physicist Tammy Ma of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which operates the NIF. 'With every other fusion attempt prior, the lit match had fizzled.' The inertial confinement method used by the NIF—the largest and most powerful laser system in the world—may not be best suited for generating electricity, however (although it seems unparalleled for simulating thermonuclear bombs). The ignition in the fuel pellet did give off more energy than put into it by the NIF's 192 giant lasers. But the lasers themselves took more than 12 hours to charge before the experiment and consumed roughly 100 times the energy released by the fusing pellet. In contrast, calculations suggest a fusion power plant would have to ignite about 10 fuel pellets every second, continuously, for 24 hours a day to deliver utility-scale service. That's an immense engineering challenge but one accepted by several inertial fusion energy startups, such as Marvel Fusion in Germany; other start-ups, such as Xcimer Energy in the U.S., meanwhile, propose using a similar system to ignite just one fuel pellet every two seconds. Ma admits that the NIF approach faces difficulties, but she points out it's still the only fusion method on Earth to have demonstrated a net energy gain: 'Fusion energy, and particularly the inertial confinement approach to fusion, has huge potential, and it is imperative that we pursue it,' she says. Instead of igniting fuel pellets with lasers, most fusion power projects—like the Wendelstein 7-X and the JET reactor—have chosen a different path to nuclear fusion. Some of the most sophisticated, such as the giant ITER project being built in France, are tokamaks. These devices were first invented in the former Soviet Union and get their name from a Russian acronym for the doughnut-shaped rings of plasma they contain. They work by inducing a powerful electric current inside the superheated plasma doughnut to make it more magnetic and prevent it from striking and damaging the walls of the reactor chamber—the main challenge for the technology. The Wendelstein 7-X reactor, however, is a stellarator—it uses a related, albeit more complicated, design that doesn't induce an electric current in the plasma but instead tries to control it with powerful external magnets alone. The result is that the plasmas in stellarators are more stable within their magnetic bottles. Reactors like the Wendelstein 7-X aim to operate for a longer period of time than tokamaks can without damaging the reactor chamber. The Wendelstein researchers plan to soon exceed a minute and eventually to run the reactor continuously for more than half an hour. 'There's really nothing in the way to make it longer,' explains physicist Thomas Klinger, who leads the project at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. 'And then we are in an area where nobody has ever been before.' The overlooked results from the JET reactor reinforce the magnetic confinement approach, although it's still not certain if tokamaks or stellarators will be the ultimate winner in the race for controlled nuclear fusion. Plasma physicist Robert Wolf, who heads the optimization of the Wendelstein reactor, thinks future fusion reactors might somehow combine the stability of stellarators with the relative simplicity of tokamaks, but it's not clear how: 'From a scientific view, it is still a bit early to say.' Several private companies have joined the fusion race. One of the most advanced projects is from the Canadian firm General Fusion, which is based near Vancouver in British Columbia. The company hopes its unorthodox fusion reactor, which uses a hybrid technology called magnetized target fusion, or MTF, will be the first to feed electric power to the grid by the 'early to mid-2030s,' according to its chief strategy officer Megan Wilson. 'MTF is the fusion equivalent of a diesel engine: practical, durable and cost-effective,' she says. University of California, San Diego, nuclear engineer George Tynan says private money is flooding the field: 'The private sector is now putting in much more money than governments, so that might change things," he says. 'In these 'hard tech' problems, like space travel and so on, the private sector seems to be more willing to take more risk.' Tynan also cites Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology spin-off that plans to build a fusion power plant called ARC in Virginia. The proposed ARC reactor is a type of compact tokamak that intends to start producing up to 400 megawatts of electricity—enough to power about 150,000 homes—in the 'early 2030s,' according to a MIT News article. Roulstone thinks the superconducting electromagnets increasingly used in magnetic confinement reactors will prove to be a key technology. Such magnets are cooled with liquid helium to a few degrees above absolute zero so that they have no electrical resistance. The magnetic fields they create in that state are many times more powerful than those created by regular electromagnets, so they give researchers greater control over superheated hydrogen plasmas. In contrast, Roulstone fears the NIF's laser approach to fusion may be too complicated: 'I am a skeptic about whether inertial confinement will work,' he says. Tynan, too, is cautious about inertial confinement fusion, although he recognizes that NIF's fusion ignition was a scientific breakthrough: 'it demonstrates that one can produce net energy gain from a fusion reaction.' He sees 'viable physics' in both the magnet and laser approaches to nuclear fusion but warns that both ideas still face many years of experimentation and testing before they can be used to generate electricity. 'Both approaches still have significant engineering challenges,' Tynan says. 'I think it is plausible that both can work, but they both have a long way to go.'
Yahoo
25-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
A Fusion Machine Maintained Plasma for an Astonishing 22 Straight Minutes
The WEST tokamak just broke the record for retaining hot fusion plasma, holding on to it for an unprecedented 22 minutes. WEST and other tokamaks are paving the way for ITER which, upon completion, will be the largest tokamak in the world. Though we have a long way to go before carbon emissions are a thing of the past, every time a tokamak keeps plasma going just a little longer, we get that much closer. As Earthlings with a planet under threat from pollution, extinction, and climate change, we need to reach net zero carbon emissions. And to do that,we're going to need alternative power sources. Nuclear fusion is one alternative source of power that could eventually make fossil fuels obsolete. Earth may someday survive on nuclear fusion by using tokamaks. These donut-shaped machines confine plasma with magnetic fields so that that particles can reach the condition necessary to fuse together and release energy. The only issue is that these plasmas are unstable and don't last long. Recently, WEST, (tungsten (W) Environment in Steady-state Tokamak), one of the EUROfusion medium-size tokamaks run from the CEA Cadarache site in southern France, broke the record for time maintaining a plasma. The machine—which has insides made of tungsten and was boosted with a surge of 2 megawatts of power—was able to hold on to the hydrogen plasma at about 50 million °C (122 million °F) for 22 minutes, or 1,337 seconds. This is right on the heels of WEST's counterpart EAST (located in China), which previously broke the record in January. EAST is called an 'artificial Sun' for a reason. In a way, producing energy with a tokamak is like harnessing the power of a star. Stars run on nuclear fusion, fusing hydrogen atoms together to create helium until they run out and either continue to exist as faint ghosts of themselves (white dwarfs), or—if they happen to be especially massive stars—go supernova and collapse into black holes. WEST's record resulted from the pursuit of something enormous. Ultimately, CEA researchers want to achieve control over their plasma, which is a sort of fluid of positively charged ions and negatively charged electrons. Plasma instability can be caused by magnetic fields, temperature, and any other conditions that cause turbulence among particles. For optimal plasma control, a tokamak should not malfunction from plasma behavior, or pollute the plasma in any way. Everything in the machine that comes in contact with the plasma should also be resistant to plasma radiation. To those ends, the tungsten in WEST boasts several advantages. Tungsten has the highest melting point of all metals, making it especially resilient to the extreme temperatures required for nuclear fusion. It also conducts heat efficiently, and has little effect on neutrons or fusion fuels. WEST and EAST—along with JET (Joint European Torus), Japan's JT-60SA, and Korea's KSTAR—are the predecessors to the even more powerful ITER, which is currently being built in southern France and will be, upon completion, the world's largest tokamak. ITER, however, is not expected to be start running until the mid to late 2030s. So, for now, researchers will keep experimenting with higher levels of power and keep trying to hang on to hot plasmas for increasing stretches of time. 'WEST has achieved a new key technological milestone,' Anne-Isabelle Etienvre, Director of Fundamental Research at the CEA, said in a press release. 'Experiments will continue with increased power. This excellent result allows both WEST and the French community to lead the way for the future use of ITER.' Unlike a star there is no danger of a human-made machine morphing into a black hole after burning out its fuel. However, if we want to achieve even a fraction of stellar power, we're going to need an immense amount of energy, and WEST just took us a few steps forward. You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?
Yahoo
11-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
TVA, Type One Energy Ink Deal to Develop Commercial Fusion Power Plant
The pursuit of energy from fusion technology has taken another step forward, with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) entering into a cooperative agreement with Type One Energy to jointly develop a fusion power plant project in TVA's territory. The companies announced plans to collaborate on a 350-MWe Infinity Two power plant that use Type One's stellarator fusion technology. The groups on Feb. 10 said the project could offer baseload power generation by the project could support planned retirements of TVA power plants that burn coal and natural gas, potentially repurposing those sites. The technology also could be deployed at new locations. The agreement expands on Project Infinity, which was launched by Type One Energy, TVA, and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in early 2024. The original project centered on deploying Type One's Infinity One stellarator prototype in TVA's decommissioned 865-MW coal-fired Bull Run power plant. The companies on Monday said Project Infinity "now encompasses a deeper, broader engagement toward commercialization of fusion energy." Bull Run was shut down in December 2023. [caption id="attachment_215622" align="alignnone" width="640"] This is a rendering of Type One Energy's fusion stellarator. Source: Type One Energy[/caption] TVA and Type One Energy will jointly work on Infinity Two fusion power plant siting studies, environmental reviews, and licensing, as well as development of project plans and financing from various sources. Type One Energy will support TVA in its evaluation and review of the project. "Unleashing America's energy potential will take all forms of generation including fusion," said Joe Hoagland, TVA vice president Innovation and Research. "Energy security is national security, and we are focused on developing a technology, supply chain, and delivery model to build an industry that can power America and the world." Type One Energy was founded in 2019. The company opened an office in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in 2023. The company's technology is touted as a stellarator fusion reactor, which is a different design than a tokamak fusion reactor. Examples of tokamak reactors include the Joint European Torus in the UK, and the ITER project under construction in France. A tokamak is based on a uniform toroid shape. A stellarator twists that shape in a figure-8 design. The companies said the scope of the latest agreement aligns with a separate arrangement between the parties to access the capabilities of TVA's Power Service Shops (PSS) in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The PSS relationship enables Type One Energy to continue shaping its supply chain for stellarator fusion power plants, and the PSS will support modular manufacturing and assembly of Infinity Two. The groups emphasized that the arrangement enables TVA "to benefit from the subsequent scaling of fusion energy on a global basis, following the successful deployment of Infinity Two." Project Infinity also includes plans for workforce development, which includes assembling a team to build, operate, and maintain fusion stellarators. "We are fortunate indeed to work together with an energy company like TVA," said Christofer Mowry, Type One Energy's CEO. "TVA brings us best-in-class power plant operations, maintenance, engineering, licensing, and even project planning and construction capabilities, all skills critical to success that we now don't need to try and recreate. Instead, we can focus on completing the design of Infinity Two and testing it with the Infinity One prototype in TVA's Bull Run plant. The ability for us to focus on developing and delivering the core stellarator technology materially derisks our path to fusion power plant commercialization." —Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER.
