Euro scientists prove it's possible to have near-limitless clean power

Produce world-record total of 59 megajoules of heat energy from fusion over 5 seconds

Fusion energy is a “huge step” closer after a landmark experiment produced world record results and demonstrated its potential to deliver safe and sustainable low-carbon energy, experts say.

On Wednesday, the UK Atomic Energy Authority announced the Joint European Torus (JET), the largest and most powerful operational reactor called a tokamak, had produced a world record total of 59 megajoules of heat energy from fusion over a five second period — the duration of the experiment.

In the experiment, scientists more than doubled previous records achieved in 1997 at the UKAEA site in Oxford using the same fuel mixture to be used in commercial fusion energy powerplants. During this experiment, JET averaged a fusion power of around 11 megawatts (megajoules per second).

The previous energy record from a fusion experiment, achieved by JET in 1997, was 22 megajoules of heat energy. However, the peak power of 16 megawatts achieved briefly in 1997 has not been achieved in recent experiments as the focus has been on sustained fusion power.

With no greenhouse gas emissions and abundant fuels, fusion can be a safe and sustainable part of the world’s future energy supply, scientists suggest. Fusion energy is based on the same principle by which stars create heat and light. Atoms are combined rather than split as in a nuclear reactor, and special forms of hydrogen are used as fuel.

But harnessing and reining in the forces involved is a huge challenge, as at the heart of a fusion reactor is a super-hot cloud of electrically charged gas, or plasma, many times hotter than the sun’s core.