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Image source, UK Atomic Energy Authority / EUROfusion
Published20 minutes ago
A new world record for energy generated by nuclear fusion – the process that powers the stars – has been set at the UK-based JET laboratory.
Nuclear fusion is considered the holy grail of energy as it could potentially produce vast amounts of clean power.
European scientists working at the site said “we have achieved things we’ve never done before”.
The result came from the lab’s final experiment after more than 40 years of fusion research.
Andre Bowie, UK Minister for Nuclear, called it a “fitting swansong”.
Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the Sun. It works by heating and forcing tiny particles together to make a heavier one which releases useful energy.
If successfully scaled up to commercial levels it could produce endless amounts of clean energy without carbon emissions. And crucially unlike wind and solar energy would not be at the mercy of weather conditions.
But as Dr Aneeqa Khan, Research Fellow in Nuclear Fusion, University of Manchester explained, this is not straightforward.
“In order for the atoms to fuse together on Earth, we need temperatures ten times hotter than the Sun – around 100 million celsius, and we need a high enough density of the atoms and for a long enough time,” she explained.
The experiments produced 69 megajoules of energy
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