Commercially viable fusion electricity comes a step closer with promising UK results
Researchers at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy believe they have solved the exhaust problem for fusion power plants
MAST-U: UK tokamak experiment brings commercially viable fusion electricity a step closer to reality. Pic souce CCFE
Researchers at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) in Oxfordshire on Wednesday released the first results from the MAST-U (Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak - Upgrade) nuclear fusion experiment, suggesting that the dream of creating commercially viable fusion power plants could be a step closer to reality.
The scientists claim that they have developed an exhaust system that can help deal with the immense temperatures created during the fusion process and can reduce the exhaust heat load by ten-fold.
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Inside a tokamak fusion reactor, light atomic nuclei are fused together to form larger ones, releasing a huge amount of energy in the process. This is achieved by confining plasma within a magnetic field and then heating it to temperatures of around 150 million degrees Celsius. The hot fusion plasma exhaust is then passed through a divertor to allow it to dissipate some of this excess heat.
Seven months of tests are said to shown at least a tenfold reduction in the heat on materials with the Super-X system.
UKAEA is planning to build STEP, a prototype fusion power plant, by the early 2040s using a compact ‘spherical tokamak’. The success of the Super-X divertor is encouraging as it is particularly suited to the spherical tokamak.