Most scientists agree that viable fusion power is still decades away, but the incremental advances in understanding and results keep coming.
An experiment conducted in 2021 created a reaction energetic enough to be self-sustaining, conceptual designs for a commercial reactor are being drawn up, while work continues on the large ITER experimental fusion reactor in France.
If it touches the walls of the reactor, it rapidly cools, stifling the reaction and causing significant damage to the chamber that holds it.
Others use an internal transport barrier (ITB) that creates higher pressure nearer the centre of the plasma.
The reaction was stopped after 30 seconds only because of limitations with hardware, and longer periods should be possible in future.
Part of that will be developing methods to withdraw heat from the reactor and use it to generate electrical current.
“The magnetic confinement fusion approach has got a pretty long history of evolving to solve the next problem that it comes up against,” he says. »