Jakarta –
The world’s largest operational experimental nuclear fusion reactor, JT-60SA, was inaugurated in Japan on Friday (1/12). This technology, which is often called the artificial sun, is expected to be the answer to humanity’s future energy needs.
The goal of the JT-60SA tokamak is to investigate the feasibility of fusion as a safe, large-scale, carbon-free source of clean energy, with more energy produced than is used to produce it.
The six-story machine, housed in a hangar in Naka, north of Tokyo, consists of a doughnut-shaped tokamak containing rotating plasma heated to 200 million degrees Celsius.
Quoted from Science Alert, the JT-60SAI tokamak is a joint project between the European Union and Japan, and is the forerunner of a larger artificial Sun project in France, namely the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) which is currently being built.
The ultimate goal of both projects is to cause the hydrogen nuclei within to fuse into a single, heavier element, helium, releasing energy in the form of light and heat, and mimicking the processes that occur within the Sun.
Researchers at ITER, running over budget, were behind schedule, and facing major technical problems. They hope to achieve the main goal of nuclear fusion technology, namely clean energy.
Sam Davis, co-leader of the JT-60SA project, said the device will bring us closer to fusion energy.
“This is the result of collaboration between more than 500 scientists and engineers and more than 70 companies across Europe and Japan,” Davis said at the inauguration.
European Union energy commissioner Kadri Simson said the JT-60SA was the most advanced tokamak in the world. He said the start of JT-60SA operations was a milestone in the history of fusion.
“Fusion has the potential to become a key component of the energy mix in the second half of this century,” added Simson.
The clean energy feat was achieved last December at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States, home to the world’s largest laser.
The US facility uses a different method to ITER and JT-60SA known as inertial confinement fusion, in which high-energy lasers are directed simultaneously into a thimble-sized cylinder filled with hydrogen.
The US government called these results an important achievement in its efforts to find clean, unlimited sources of electricity and end dependence on fossil fuels that emit carbon which causes climate change and geopolitical upheaval.
Unlike fission, fusion does not pose the risk of a nuclear disaster like what happened in Fukushima, Japan in 2011. Nuclear fission is also claimed to produce less radioactive waste than current power plants.
Watch the video “Don’t want to lose! Europe makes artificial sun to compete with China”
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2023-12-07 09:40:51
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