Record results announced yesterday at the
UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) site in Oxford, are the clearest demonstration yet of the potential for fusion energy to deliver safe and sustainable low-carbon energy around the world.
Researchers from the
EUROfusion consortium – 4,800 experts, students and staff from across Europe, co-funded by the European Commission – more than doubled previous records achieved in 1997 at the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) site in Oxford using the same fuel mixture to be used by commercial fusion energy powerplants.
A total of 59 megajoules of sustained fusion energy was demonstrated by scientists and engineers working on the Joint European Torus (JET), the largest and most powerful operational tokamak machine in the world.
The record and scientific data from these crucial experiments are a major boost for ITER, the larger and more advanced version of JET and clear the way for experiments there in around 10 years time. ITER is a fusion research mega-project supported by seven members — China, the EU, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the USA — based in the south of France, to further demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion energy.
As pressures mount to address the effects of climate change through decarbonising energy production, this success is a major step forward on fusion’s roadmap as a safe, efficient, low-carbon means of tackling the global energy crisis.
Ground-breaking research and innovationGeorge Freeman MP, Minister for Science, Research and Innovation, said: “These milestone results are testament to the UK’s role as a global leader in fusion energy research. They are evidence that the ground-breaking research and innovation being done here in the UK, and via collaboration with our partners across Europe, is making fusion power a reality.
“Our Industrial Strategy for Fusion is intended to ensure the UK continues to lead the world on the commercial roll-out of this transformational technology, with the potential to deliver clean energy for generations to come.”
Ian Chapman, UKAEA’s CEO, said: “These landmark results have taken us a huge step closer to conquering one of the biggest scientific and engineering challenges of them all. It is reward for over 20 years of research and experiments with our partners from around Europe.
“It is clear we must make significant changes to address the effects of climate change, and fusion offers so much potential. We are building the knowledge and developing the new technology required to deliver a low-carbon and sustainable source of baseload energy that helps protect the planet for future generations. Our world needs fusion energy.”
Tony Donné, EUROfusion programme manager, said: “This achievement is the result of many years of preparation by the EUROfusion team of researchers across Europe. The record, and more importantly the things we have learned about fusion under these conditions and how it fully confirms our predictions, show that we are on the right path to a future world of fusion energy. If we can maintain fusion for 5sec, we can do it for 5min and then 5hr as we scale up our operations in future machines.
“This is a big moment for every one of us and the entire fusion community. Crucially, the operational experience we’ve gained under realistic conditions gives us great confidence for the next stage of experiments at ITER and Europe’s demonstration power plant EU DEMO, which is being designed to put electricity on the grid.”
Dr Bernard Bigot, ITER director general, said: “A sustained pulse of deuterium-tritium fusion at this power level — nearly industrial scale — delivers a resounding confirmation to all of those involved in the global fusion quest. For the ITER Project, the JET results are a strong confidence builder that we are on the right track as we move forward toward demonstrating full fusion power.”
ITER logo
Fusion, the process that powers stars like the Sun, promises a near-limitless green electricity source for the long-term, using small amounts of fuel that can be sourced worldwide from inexpensive materials. The fusion process brings together atoms of light elements like hydrogen at high temperatures to form helium and release tremendous energy as heat. Fusion is inherently safe in that it cannot start a run-away process.
JET — where temperatures 10-times hotter than the centre of the sun are reached — is a vital test bed for ITER, one of the biggest collaborative science projects in history. The larger French-based project and future power plants plan to use the same deuterium-tritium (D-T) fuel mix and operate under similar conditions to the record-breaking EUROfusion experiments held at the Culham Science Centre in Oxford.