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EUROfusion / CC BY 4.0
News + Trends

Fusion experiment sets new energy record

Spektrum der Wissenschaft
13.2.2024
Translation: machine translated

The Joint European Torus (JET) has set a new record: The research facility generated 69 megajoules of energy, around 15 per cent more than the previous record. The experiment provided important data for a future fusion reactor.

The era of the Joint European Torus (JET) ends with a new world record for fusion energy. The European test facility in the UK generated 69 megajoules of energy for five seconds - more than any other fusion facility before it. These results were presented by the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) at a press conference on 8 February 2024.

Fusion power plants are designed to mimic the processes inside the sun, where the light atomic nuclei of hydrogen fuse together. To do this, the particles have to overcome their electrical repulsion. While in the sun, the enormous force of gravity compresses and heats everything sufficiently, this requires strong magnetic fields and high temperatures of more than 100 million degrees Celsius in terrestrial reactors.

To generate this amount of heat, however, about three times as much energy was needed to heat up JET, as scientific coordinator Mikhail Maslov explained during the press conference. The energy balance was therefore not positive.

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Originalartikel auf Spektrum.de
Header image: EUROfusion / CC BY 4.0

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