European scientists have taken a significant step closer to mastering a technology that could allow them to one day harness nuclear fusion, providing a clean and almost limitless source of energy, British officials said on Wednesday.
Researchers at the Joint European Torus experiment near Oxford, England, produced a record amount of heat over 5 seconds, which was the duration of the experiment, the UK Atomic Energy Authority said.
The 59 megajoules of sustained fusion energy produced were more than double the previous record achieved in 1997.
The agency said that the result was “the clearest demonstration worldwide of the potential for fusion energy to deliver safe and sustainable low-carbon energy.”
“If we can maintain fusion for five seconds, we can do it for five minutes and then five hours as we scale up our operations in future machines,” said Tony Donne, program manager for EUROfusion. “This is a big moment for every one of us and the entire fusion community.”
Atomic Energy Authority chief executive officer Ian Chapman said that the results were a “huge step closer to conquering one of the biggest scientific and engineering challenges of them all.”
The facility, also known as JET, is home to the world’s largest and most powerful operational tokamak — a donut-shaped device that is considered one promising method for performing controlled fusion.
Scientists who were not involved in the project said it was a significant result, but still a long way from achieving commercial fusion power.
Researchers around the world have long been working on nuclear fusion technology, trying different approaches. The ultimate goal is to generate power the way the sun generates heat, by pressing hydrogen atoms so close to each other that they combine into helium, which releases torrents of energy.
Carolyn Kuranz at the University of Michigan called the development “very exciting” and a step toward achieving “ignition,” or when the fuel can continue to “burn” on its own and produce more energy than what is needed to spark the initial reaction.
Kuranz said that the results appeared “very promising” for ITER, a much larger experimental fusion facility in southern France that uses the same technology and is backed by many European countries, the US, China, Japan, India, South Korea and Russia.
ITER is expected to begin operations in 2026.
Riccardo Betti, a fusion expert at the University of Rochester in New York state, said that the achievement lay mainly in sustaining the reaction at high performance levels for 5 seconds, significantly longer than previously achieved in a tokamak.
The amount of power gained was still well below the amount needed to perform the experiment, Betti said.
Ian Fells, an emeritus professor of energy conversion at the University of Newcastle, described the new record as a landmark in fusion research.
“Now it is up to the engineers to translate this into carbon-free electricity and mitigate the problem of climate change,” Fells said. “Ten to 20 years could see commercialization.”
Stephanie Diem of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said that the technology used by JET to achieve the result, using magnets to control ultrahot plasma, show that harnessing fusion is feasible.
“The next milestone on the horizon for magnetic fusion is to demonstrate scientific breakeven, where the amount of energy produced from fusion reactions exceeds that going into the device,” Diem said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to