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Warpy

(111,525 posts)
Tue May 7, 2024, 07:38 PM May 7

Fusion Breakthrough: 6 Minutes of Plasma Sets New Reactor Record

A fusion reactor in southern France, called WEST, just achieved an important milestone that brings us one step closer to clean, sustainable, nearly limitless energy.

Scientists at New Jersey's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, who collaborated on the project, announced today that the device created a super-hot material called a plasma that reached 90 million degrees Fahrenheit (50 million degrees Celsius) for 6 straight minutes.

The ultimate goal is to sustain a super-hot plasma for many hours, but 6 minutes is a new world record for a device like WEST. Other nuclear reactors similar to WEST have created hotter plasmas, but they haven't lasted as long.

https://www.sciencealert.com/fusion-breakthrough-6-minutes-of-plasma-sets-new-reactor-record

Baby steps, baby steps. I wonder how they're going to harvest the energy once they sustain it. My best guess says the pursuit of fusion is going to lead science in an unanticpated direction.

7 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Fusion Breakthrough: 6 Minutes of Plasma Sets New Reactor Record (Original Post) Warpy May 7 OP
I've been in the Princeton facility. Open house every year. amerikat May 7 #1
Holy crap, tungten. grumpyduck May 7 #2
Useful for more than salting gold bars Warpy May 7 #3
That's 3 times as hot as the center of the sun BWdem4life May 8 #4
It is contained in a magnetic field edhopper May 8 #5
We have been 10 years from sustained fusion edhopper May 8 #6
I know, they want to keep the public from souring on the whole nuclear idea Warpy May 8 #7

amerikat

(4,940 posts)
1. I've been in the Princeton facility. Open house every year.
Tue May 7, 2024, 08:06 PM
May 7

The thing that struck me was the tunnel between the reactor and the control room. Cable racks lined the walls but they only contained two fiber optic cables. The 4' turbo pumps were pretty amazing too.

BWdem4life

(1,735 posts)
4. That's 3 times as hot as the center of the sun
Wed May 8, 2024, 05:18 AM
May 8

How do you contain that kind of heat? How does it not destroy everything that is generating it?

Warpy

(111,525 posts)
7. I know, they want to keep the public from souring on the whole nuclear idea
Wed May 8, 2024, 01:31 PM
May 8

as serious fission nuclear accidents pile up, nature always siding with the hidden flaws in any human designed system.

I still think the research will eventually lead in a different direction.

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