Nuclear fusion breakthrough: World's biggest reactor is switched on

It'll be the largest fusion reactor in the world until ITER in southern France is built

by Jonathan Chadwick For Mailonline

• It'll be the largest fusion reactor in the world until ITER in southern France is built

• Nuclear fusion reactors mimic energy-producing process of stars like our sun 

It could usher an era of limitless clean, safe and affordable energy to meet the world's demand. 

Now, the 'holy grail' of power production – nuclear fusion, which makes the sun and the stars shine – has come a step closer. 

Scientists have switched on JT-60SA, a £500 million fusion device measuring around 40 feet in diameter, located in Naka north of Tokyo, Japan.

JT-60SA contains swirling plasma heated up 200 million degrees Celsius (360 million degrees Fahrenheit). 

This is the threshold where hydrogen atoms can begin to fuse into helium, releasing sustainable energy in the process that could put an end to fossil fuels. 

What is nuclear fusion? 

Fusion involves placing hydrogen atoms under high heat and pressure until they fuse into heavier helium atoms.

When deuterium and tritium nuclei - which can be found in hydrogen - fuse, they form a helium nucleus, a neutron and a lot of energy.

This is done by heating the fuel to temperatures in excess of 150 million°C, forming a hot plasma. 

Strong magnetic fields are used to keep the plasma away from the walls so that it doesn't cool down and lost it energy potential.

These are produced by superconducting coils surrounding the vessel, and by an electrical current driven through the plasma. 

For energy production. plasma has to be confined for a sufficiently long period for fusion to occur.

Built and operated jointly by Europe and Japan, JT-60SA will be the world's largest fusion reactor until the completion of ITER in France.

Other smaller reactors are being built and tested – including the ST40 in Oxfordshire – in an initial step towards what could be nuclear fusion power plants around the world, supplying electricity for homes. 

For now, JT-60SA's primary focus is as a research facility and to investigate how fusion power plants that are one day built will actually operate. 

According to experts, it will take another two years before JT-60SA produces the long-lasting plasmas needed for meaningful physics experiments. 

At an inauguration ceremony for JT-60SA on Friday, deputy project leader Sam Davis said the Japanese device will 'bring us closer to fusion energy'.

'It's the result of a collaboration between more than 500 scientists and engineers and more than 70 companies throughout Europe and Japan,' he said.

EU energy commissioner Kadri Simson said JT-60SA is 'the most advanced tokamak in the world', calling the start of operations 'a milestone for fusion history'.

'Fusion has the potential to become a key component for energy mix in the second half of this century,' Simson said.

JT-60SA – which began constructed back in 2009 – is a six-storey-high machine measuring 50 feet high and 44 feet wide.

Like other fusion reactors, hydrogen gas inside JT-60SA's donut-shaped 'tokamak' vessel is heated to become 'plasma' – a soup of positively charged particles (ions) and negatively charged particles (electrons). 

Plasma – which is often referred to as the fourth state of matter after solid, liquid and gas – comprises over 99 per cent of the visible universe and makes up most of our sun. 

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