A European consortium, EuroFusion, has taken an essential step on the long road to commercially viable nuclear fusion. The consortium just revealed the beginning of a five-year "conceptual design" stage for its DEMOnstration power plant (DEMO), a press statement reveals. This means nuclear fusion researchers are starting design work on a European demonstration power station that...
Community Fusion System (CFS) and MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center claimed that a high-temperature superconducting magnet was successfully tested. The 20-tesla field intensity, according to MIT researchers and CFS, is the most intense electromagnetic field ever created on Earth, paving the way for the construction of the first fusion power generator. Magnet design is...
(Solar Orbiter/EUI Team/ESA & NASA) Nuclear power generates about 10% of the world's electricity, with countries like France relying on it for nearly 70%. Tech giants like Google are also turning to nuclear energy to power their demanding data centers. The energy for nuclear power comes from atomic binding energy, released through two primary processes: fission...
Russia and China aim to deploy a lunar nuclear reactor by 2035. Credit: gizmodo. In 2021, the Chinese and Russian space agencies forged a collaborative agreement to establish a research facility on the Moon. Recently, they unveiled plans to construct an automated nuclear reactor on the lunar surface, intended to energize the International Lunar Research...
Engineers Employ AI to Manage Fusion Power Integration into the Grid. Credit: Google DeepMind Deep within the confines of the tokamak, a toroidal chamber sculpted to embrace the marvels of nuclear fusion, hydrogen atoms collide with immense force, birthing a searing plasma hotter than the sun. Nuclear fusion is key to sustainable energy, leveraging hydrogen isotopes,...
A Stellar Achievement: Unveiling the Magnificence of the KSTAR (Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research) Device. Credit: Korea Institute of Fusion Energy (KFE) The Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR), situated in Daejeon, South Korea, continues to push the boundaries of nuclear fusion research. Recently, significant upgrades have been introduced to enhance its capabilities, enabling the...
Japan marked a significant milestone on December 1 with the inauguration of JT-60SA, currently the world's largest operational superconducting tokamak. Shaped like a donut, a tokamak is a nuclear fusion reactor, and this new facility, developed in collaboration with the European Union (EU), serves as a precursor to the under-construction International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor...
Hiroshima University engineers pioneer 3D printing for robust steel-aluminum bonds: up to 17,404.5 psi resilience. Credits: Motomichi Yamamoto/Hiroshima University. Steel and aluminum are crucial players in bolstering economic growth. However, their fusion zones have long been brittle. Thanks to a novel 3D printing method, the unexplored territory of combining these metals may now experience a...
A donut-shaped magnetic confinement device called a tokamak is one of the leading designs for a working fusion power generator, with many such experiments running worldwide. Credit: Christopher Roux, EUROfusion Consortium, CC BY Our society faces the grand difficulty of offering sustainable, secure, and affordable forms of generating energy while trying to reduce CO2 emissions to net...
Since the dynamics inside a fusion reactor are extremely complicated, the walls may melt. Image credit: Max Planck Institute of Plasma physics. Cutaway of a Fusion Reactor A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) and the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wein) has actually found a way to manage Type-I...
