Scientists at a lab in Oxfordshire have shattered their own record for sustained nuclear fusion energy, releasing 59 megajoules of heat in a single five-second burst — more than double what the same facility achieved 25 years ago. The breakthrough has been called a “major milestone” on the road to a virtually limitless, low-carbon energy source.
At a glance
- Nuclear fusion record: The Joint European Torus (JET) facility generated 59 megajoules of heat during a sustained fusion reaction — equivalent to roughly 14 kg of TNT — surpassing its previous record of 21.7 megajoules set in 1997 C.E.
- Fusion fuel: The experiment used a mixture of deuterium and tritium, two isotopes of hydrogen, confirming they can be burned in a sustained and stable way — a critical proof of concept for future power plants.
- Clean energy potential: Nuclear fusion releases no greenhouse gases, and just 1 kg of fusion fuel contains roughly 10 million times the energy of 1 kg of coal, oil, or gas.
What happened inside the machine
The JET device is a doughnut-shaped reactor designed to contain superheated plasma — highly ionized gas — at temperatures reaching 150 million degrees Celsius. That is 10 times hotter than the core of the sun.
At those extreme temperatures, atomic nuclei collide and fuse together, releasing enormous amounts of energy in the process. It is the same reaction that powers stars, though stars achieve it at lower temperatures because they have gravity working in their favor. On Earth, the engineering challenge of recreating those conditions has consumed decades of scientific effort.
The team at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, which operates JET, announced the result on Feb. 9, 2022 C.E. after more than two decades of tests, refinements, and incremental progress. Prof. Ian Chapman, chief executive of the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority, described the achievement as bringing humanity “a huge step closer to conquering one of the biggest scientific and engineering challenges of them all.”
Why five seconds matters more than it sounds
A five-second burst of energy may seem modest. But experts say it is precisely the kind of evidence fusion researchers have been waiting for.
Dr. Mark Wenman, a reader in nuclear materials at Imperial College London, explained that sustaining the reaction — even briefly — demonstrates that the fuel can be burned in a controlled, repeatable way. “If you can burn it for five seconds, presumably you could keep it stable and keep it burning for many minutes, hours, or days, which is what you are going to need for a proper fusion power plant,” he said. “It’s the proof of that concept that they have achieved.”
Prof. Ian Fells, emeritus professor of energy conversion at the University of Newcastle, called the result “a landmark in fusion research” and said the task now shifts to engineers who must translate the science into carbon-free electricity connected to the grid.
The road ahead: Iter and beyond
The JET results carry direct significance for Iter, a much larger international fusion experiment currently under construction in southern France. Iter is designed to use the same deuterium-tritium fuel combination and is scheduled to begin burning it in 2035 C.E. If successful, it would generate more heat than is consumed by its own plasma — a threshold no fusion device has yet crossed.
Beyond Iter, the plan is to build a European demonstration power plant that produces more electricity than it uses and feeds it into the grid. Deuterium is abundant in seawater, making it relatively easy to source. Tritium is far rarer and must be produced in nuclear reactors, though future fusion plants — including Iter — are expected to generate their own tritium by using high-energy neutrons to split lithium.
The appeal of fusion as a long-term energy source is considerable. It produces no carbon emissions, generates no long-lived radioactive waste at the scale of conventional nuclear fission, and draws on fuel sources that are effectively global in distribution. For communities in regions most exposed to the costs of fossil fuel extraction — including many Indigenous and low-income populations — the promise of cheap, clean, decentralized energy carries particular weight.
Still a long way to go
Fusion has carried the label of “30 years away” for most of the past century, and important challenges remain. Iter will not generate net electricity — only net heat — and a commercial power plant remains decades off at minimum. The tritium supply chain, material durability under intense neutron bombardment, and the sheer cost of construction are all unresolved engineering problems. The 2022 C.E. record is a genuine step forward, not a finish line.
Still, scientists who have worked on fusion for careers measured in decades describe this moment with unusual confidence. The physics is working. The fuel burns. The numbers are pointing in the right direction.
Read more
For more on this story, see: The Guardian
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Renewables now make up at least 49% of global power capacity
- Alzheimer’s risk cut in half by drug in landmark prevention trial
- The Good News for Humankind archive on clean energy
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