Research & Development

MIT Nuclear Fusion Record A ‘Leap Forward’ In Pursuit Of Unlimited Clean Energy

By David Dalton
18 October 2016

MIT Nuclear Fusion Record A ‘Leap Forward’ In Pursuit Of Unlimited Clean Energy
The interior of the Alcator C-Mod at MIT. Photo: Bob Mumgaard/Plasma Science and Fusion Centre.

18 Oct (NucNet): A team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has made a “leap forward” in the pursuit of clean energy by creating the highest plasma pressure ever recorded, using its Alcator C-Mod tokamak reactor.

Plasma pressure is the key ingredient to producing energy from nuclear fusion.

Now MIT scientists have increased the record plasma pressure to more than two atmospheres, a 16% increase on the previous record set in 2005, at a temperature of 35 million Celsius and lasting for two seconds. The breakthrough was presented yesterday at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s fusion summit in Japan.

“This is a remarkable achievement,” said Dale Meade, former deputy director at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. “The record plasma pressure validates the high-magnetic-field approach as an attractive path to practical fusion energy.”

Prof. Robert McCrory of the University of Rochester, New York, said the result confirms that the high pressures required for a burning plasma can be best achieved with high-magnetic-field tokamaks such as Alcator C-Mod.

MIT said the world record was achieved on 30 September 2016, the last day of the MIT tokamak’s operation, because funding from the US Department of Energy has now ended. The US, along with the EU, China, India, South Korea, Russia and Japan, are now putting their fusion funding into the €15bn ($17bn) International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (Iter), a tokamak under construction in France.

Iter will be approximately 800 times larger in volume than Alcator C-Mod, but it will operate at a lower magnetic field. Iter is expected to reach 2.6 atmospheres when in full operation by 2032, according to a recent US Department of Energy report.

MIT said nuclear fusion has the potential to produce nearly unlimited supplies of clean, safe, carbon-free energy. Fusion is the same process that powers the sun, and it can be realised in reactors that simulate the conditions of ultra-hot miniature “stars” of plasma — superheated gas — that are contained within a magnetic field.

Pen Use this content

Related