Fusion Breakthrough: 6 Minutes of Plasma Sets New Reactor Record

[Warpy]

A fusion reactor in southern France, called WEST, just achieved an important milestone that brings us one step closer to clean, sustainable, nearly limitless energy.

Scientists at New Jersey's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, who collaborated on the project, announced today that the device created a super-hot material called a plasma that reached 90 million degrees Fahrenheit (50 million degrees Celsius) for 6 straight minutes.

The ultimate goal is to sustain a super-hot plasma for many hours, but 6 minutes is a new world record for a device like WEST. Other nuclear reactors similar to WEST have created hotter plasmas, but they haven't lasted as long.

https://www.sciencealert.com/fusion-breakthrough-6-minutes-of-plasma-sets-new-reactor-record

Baby steps, baby steps. I wonder how they're going to harvest the energy once they sustain it. My best guess says the pursuit of fusion is going to lead science in an unanticpated direction.

[amerikat]

1. I've been in the Princeton facility. Open house every year.

The thing that struck me was the tunnel between the reactor and the control room. Cable racks lined the walls but they only contained two fiber optic cables. The 4' turbo pumps were pretty amazing too.

[grumpyduck]

2. Holy crap, tungten.

What Edison finally got to work for filaments in his light bulbs.

[Warpy]

3. Useful for more than salting gold bars

Who knew?

[BWdem4life]

4. That's 3 times as hot as the center of the sun

How do you contain that kind of heat? How does it not destroy everything that is generating it?

[edhopper]

5. It is contained in a magnetic field

Which doesn't allow any particles to exit.

[edhopper]

6. We have been 10 years from sustained fusion

since I took a physics course in the 70s.

[Warpy]

7. I know, they want to keep the public from souring on the whole nuclear idea

as serious fission nuclear accidents pile up, nature always siding with the hidden flaws in any human designed system.

I still think the research will eventually lead in a different direction.