Breakthrough in China’s artificial sun project could lead to more stable fusion energy: international team
- Discovery could help future fusion experiments create a safe, clean and near-limitless energy source for humanity, researchers report
- Europe-based fusion project ITER finds the results ‘very comforting’, says physicist
The breakthrough could help future fusion experiments create a safe, clean and near-limitless energy source for humanity, the researchers said.
The milestone run – which used magnetic fields to heat up plasma-charged gas made of free-moving electrons and hydrogen ions to 70 million degrees Celsius – achieved high energy confinement both deeper in the plasma and at the plasma edge, wrote the team from the Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and their collaborators from the US, Europe and Japan, among others.
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China sets new world record in development of ‘artificial sun’
Further experiments showed that the new mode “exhibits great potential” for application in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the world’s largest fusion reactor now under construction in France, they wrote.