Fusion ignition

The Korea Institute of Fusion Energy has installed a new diverter in the KSTAR tokamak, allowing the artificial sun to sustain high-ion temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius for longer.Let’s Eat a Chocolate Xbox ControllerKSTAR—called an artificial sun because it does nuclear fusion, the same reaction that powers our star—was completed in 2007 and achieved its first plasma in 2008. It is about one-third the size of ITER, the massive experimental reactor being built in France. Both reactors are tokamaks:…

The U.S. Department of Energy is expected to announce a major breakthrough in nuclear fusion research on Tuesday morning. Word of the expected news is already out, as the Financial Times reported yesterday that the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieved net energy gain in a fusion reaction. That means more energy was produced from the reaction than it took to power the reaction.Though the research finding is just that—i.e., a result with no immediate consequences for our energy…