A new nuclear fusion experiment has managed to set yet another energy production record. The Joint European Torus (JET), built in England, produced 59 megajoules of energy, about the same as the energy released by an explosion of 14 kg of TNT.
Nuclear fusion reactors hold great promise for the production of clean energy, but scientists have not yet managed to produce more energy than what is needed to heat the fuel to the point of fusing the nuclei of its atoms.
Fusing atoms releases a greater amount of energy compared to fossil fuels. To give you an idea of effectiveness, a pineapple-sized ball of hydrogen offers as much energy as 10,000 tons of coal.
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This is the same kind of process that takes place in stars, and it’s from nuclear fusion that they get energy to shine for billions of years. But it’s not easy to do that on our planet, where there’s not enough pressure on atoms. To do this, scientists need to build ingenious equipment — reactors.
There are different types of nuclear fusion reactors, such as the Tokamak, used in China and South Korea, and the stellarator, used in Germany. All of them are in the experimental phase, as is JET, and each sets new records each year.
New nuclear fusion record
JET began operations in 1983 and now uses isotopes of hydrogen, called deuterium and tritium, as fuel. These elements have more particles in their atomic nuclei and are considered the most viable for producing nuclear energy greater than the energy used to start the process.
However, there are several challenges for the nuclear fusion of these isotopes, such as the need to create a special shield. It’s that deuterium-tritium fusion can generate dangerous amounts of high-energy neutrons, each moving at 17.3% the speed of light.
So the new experiments swapped the previous carbon coating for a mixture of beryllium and tungsten. This new wall is more resistant to the stresses of nuclear fusion and also holds on to less hydrogen than carbon.
Another problem is that tritium is radioactive and requires special handling, in addition to being quite rare. For now, tritium is produced in nuclear fission reactors, but future fusion plants could emit neutrons to generate their own tritium fuel.
