Nuclear fusion advances with the development of the JT-6oSA by Europe and Japan

mauromar (73)in #science • 4 years ago

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One of the cleanest, cheapest and most sustainable energies would be nuclear fusion, which, as you all know, consists in making hydrogen atoms fuse to obtain energy, in the same way that the Sun and the stars do.

To achieve this fusion we must be able to heat hydrogen gas to more than 100,000,000 (one hundred million) ºC, which is achieved by building a complex contraption called "Tokamak".

The tokamak is a device made up of a toroidal (donut-shaped) chamber filled with hydrogen confined in powerful magnetic fields, which is heated to millions of degrees and allows these atoms to fuse together, releasing large amounts of energy.

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After 12 years of work, Europe and Japan have taken an important step towards obtaining fusion energy by designing the JT-6oSA, the world's most powerful tokamak before ITER goes live.

With a diameter of 12 meters, the JT-6oSA's heaters will be able to heat the hydrogen plasma to 200 million ºC, confining this plasma using powerful magnets cooled with liquid helium to -269 ºC.

During its useful life, this tokamak will serve as a test bed for the fusion technologies that will later become part of ITER, a much more ambitious project that is expected to finally obtain more energy than that used to fuse atoms.

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The ITER project has been forging since 1985 and has the collaboration of 35 nations for its construction and development, but it seems that it is much more complex than we would like.

If it works, ITER would generate unlimited energy by fusing hydrogen atoms, which is the most abundant element in the universe and without leaving any type of toxic residue.

Hopefully this latest design is definitive in the construction of the ITER and we all have time to see it in time.