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Japan and the European Union have officially inaugurated testing at the world’s largest experimental nuclear fusion plant. Located roughly 85 miles north of Tokyo, the six-story, JT-60SA “tokamak” facility heats plasma to 200 million degrees Celsius (around 360 million Fahrenheit) within its circular, magnetically insulated reactor. Although JT-60SA first powered up during a test run back in October, the partner governments’ December 1 announcement marks the official start of operations at the world’s biggest fusion center, reaffirming a “long-standing cooperation in the field of fusion energy.”
Researchers have been pushing towards the “Holy Grail” of sustainable green energy production for decades. The tokamak, has greatly contributed to this research. It is a large hollow donut, filled with gaseous hydrogen fuel that is spun at immense speeds using powerful magnetic coil encasements. The result is intense force ionizing to atoms to form helium plasma, similar to how the sun produces its energy.
[Related: How a US lab created energy with fusion—again.]
Speaking at the inauguration event, EU energy commissioner Kadri Simson referred to the JT-60SA as “the most advanced tokamak in the world,” representing “a milestone for fusion history.”
“Fusion has the potential to become a key component for energy mix in the second half of this century,” she continued.
However, even if such a revolutionary milestone is passed, it is unlikely to be at JT-60SA. Along with its still-in-construction sibling, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in Europe, the projects are intended solely to demonstrate scalable fusion’s feasibility. Current hopes estimate ITER’s operational start for sometime in 2025, although the undertaking has been fraught with financial, logistical, and construction issues since its groundbreaking back in 2011.
Experts, alongside Simson, believe creating sustainable nuclear fusion would be a revolutionary moment that could ensure an emissionless, renewable energy future. Achieving the power source is fraught with technological and economic hurdles. Although researchers have been chasing this goal for a long time: The world’s first experimental tokamak was built back in 1958 by the USSR.
While researchers can now generate fusion energy at multiple facilities around the world, it is usually at a net loss. By advancing the technology further at facilities like JT-60SA, industry experts think that it is only a matter of time until fusion reactors regularly achieve net energy production gains.
[Related: Colorado is getting a state-of-the-art laser fusion facility.]
In the meantime, another possible road to fusion energy is making its own promising gains. Earlier this year, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Northern California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieved a net energy gain for the second time using what’s the inertial confinement fusion method. In this process, a high-powered laser is split into 192 beams that then hit a capsule containing a pellet of tritium and deuterium.
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