An international collaborative project on nuclear fusion has achieved a significant milestone. With more than thirty nations on board, this ambitious project has reached a stage where the construction of what may be the strongest magnet in the world is currently happening. Nuclear fusion relies on fusing atoms at incredibly high temperatures to generate energy, and this magnet serves a vital role in that process.
Preparation for Plasma Creation Continues Under the ITER Project
A fusion energy reactor, called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), being built in the south of France, is backed and aided by several of the world’s largest partners, including the US, China, Japan, Russia, and the EU. It uses its advanced magnetic system to create a so-called “magnetic confinement field”, an invisible barrier that holds super-heated plasma particles in place. Trapped in this space, the particles are supposed to be functionally bonded, undergoing fusion and emitting tremendous energy, the basic product of nuclear fusion control.
Completion of Central Solenoid: An Important Milestone
Now, the ITER team celebrates another milestone together: the completion and successful individual testing of the final element of this key device, called the central solenoid, by engineers and scientists in the U.S. and at ITER. Since this accomplishment, the assembly stage of the overall project has moved forward. This milestone is a tangible step forward toward realizing the long-held goal of using nuclear fusion as an energy source.
The Director General emphasizes the spirit of cooperation and momentum of the projects.
Pietro Barabaschi, Director General of ITER, added: “The bottle is a handy analogy for holding the plasma. Without this magnet to keep it contained, you know, like the bottle with the wine?” Qiu stressed that the “plasma generation itself, which is the end purpose of nuclear fusion research, must be contained in order for its creation to be realized.” Mr. Barabaschi also mentioned the excellent international collaboration within the project and the speed at which construction is being accomplished.
Commercial Viability Timeline Context
Completion of this critical magnet was initially scheduled for 2021, and this suggests that the project is running behind schedule. Charles Seife, a New York University journalism professor who has been covering fusion milestones since the 1980s, said in a text that the timeline illustrates how difficult these “huge and expensive” science projects can be, with a decade of work immediately followed by a four-year delay. However, he sounded a note of skepticism about the timeframes touted by some for commercial fusion in the near future: ”I will be slightly more skeptical” – and point to more than a few decades still ahead.
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Other Key Insights
Nuclear fusion is when two light atomic nuclei combine to produce a heavier nucleus and release vast amounts of energy. This is the same process that fuels the Sun and other stars. This process, which scientists have been attempting to mimic on Earth for decades, could one day provide a clean, nearly limitless energy supply. Controlled nuclear fusion is attractive since this technically mature process would be a sustainable and non-polluting energy source.
Iter, an international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject, is one of the most ambitious scientific collaborations in history. That is the aim of being a scientific and technological demonstration of fusion power. The French-built contraption is a “tokamak,” a type of machine that uses powerful magnetic fields to hold and control the ultra-hot plasma where fusion happens. Getting fusion to output more energy than is put into the tokamak is a complex engineering problem.
The main solenoid in the magnet that was in the news is a very special, very powerful electromagnet that starts the plasma current and keeps it going in the tokamak. This process creates its magnetic field, which, together with other magnets in the system, can contain the plasma and must be able to reach fusion conditions. This magnet, when excited in the lab, is an essential milestone in making nuclear fusion practical.
Fusion power development faces formidable challenges, including dealing with the plasma—the incredibly hot state of matter (we’re talking over 100 million degrees Celsius, way above the temperature of the Sun’s core) that fusion requires—and making sure that you have physically stable confinement of this plasma while also getting more power out of the reactions than you put in. The first step towards practical nuclear fusion is to solve these enormous technical challenges.
Problems and time delays may have plagued the ITER project, but its eventual success could provide a big step towards making fusion a reality. Moreover, ITER’s expertise and technologies will be transferred to private and public fusion research activities across the globe. Finding clean and sustainable sources of energy has remained one of our biggest global challenges, and nuclear fusion could be a significant part of the answer to satisfying our future energy needs. Nuclear fusion development matters to the future of energy security and the environment, too.
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