Speaker 1: The world's largest fusion machine has set a world record for fusion energy production. We talked to one of the scientists working on this project to learn about how it was achieved, how it compares to other fusion projects around the world and what it might mean for the future of fusion energy, The dream of an earthly energy source as clean and efficient as the reactions powering our sun has lived in the minds of researchers for decades
Speaker 2: [00:00:30] In order to achieve fusion reactions. So we are fusing together, light nuclei. This is dium and tritium. In this case, this are just hydrogen isotopes. We need to bring, uh, the determined, the treated very high temperatures and very high pressures. We're talking over hundreds of millions of degree. CELs what we get is a plasma. It's an ized gas
Speaker 1: Recently, a new breakthrough at the joint European tourists or jet for short has brought this dream one step closer to reality.
Speaker 2: [00:01:00] So the jet talkback is that actually the biggest fusion machine that we have in the world right now, it's a Tomac. A Tomac is just a donut shaped device in which we hold the plasma at using magnetic fields, we managed to achieve very high fusion energy. It's a record fusion energy ever produced. We're talking about 59 megas. We did this by using the fuel of future fusion reactors, which is dium atrium. What we actually wanna have in most other [00:01:30] experimental, uh, plants we are using just dium. So this was quite a unique thing. And of course, along the way, doing this, we learned a lot about how the plasma itself behaves and how we can that knowledge to next fusion devices.
Speaker 1: The record breaking plasma lasted five seconds, which is significant for fusion in this stage of development. However, the record for longest sustained nuclear fusion was recently broken by a different fusion device. China's artificial sun, which [00:02:00] sustained its plasma for 17 minutes. I, I asked Dr. Kaatsu to explain the difference between these two fusion milestones.
Speaker 2: The key difference between that is they don't use the dium tritium fuel. Currently jet is the only machine that can do dium and tritium together, which is the fuel mix we're gonna use in any future fusion, power plant. And of course they don't reach the high temperatures at this kind of plasmas. We run here, but of course, as you understand for fusion research, everything has to go together. So [00:02:30] we want also the duration we want also the higher fusion power. So all of this combines at the end towards the common goal,
Speaker 1: Despite the frighteningly high temperatures and memories of Dr. Otto Octavius is disastrous. I'll be it fictional attempt at containing infusion reaction with robot arms, Dr. Kaatsu tells me that fusion of this sort is safe, clean, and sustainable.
Speaker 2: We get to dium from seawater. Uh, Trium the future fusion power plant will be able to [00:03:00] breed itself. We don't have any CO2. Of course not. We don't have any long lived radioactive elements remaining that we need to take care of. If something doesn't work, the, uh, plasma shuts off itself while
Speaker 1: Breaking records is always exciting. There's still a long way to go. Before fusion starts supplying G to power
Speaker 2: Grids. Jet is an experiment. Jet was never meant to produce fusion energy in the terms of making it to electricity. Then we proceed to eater the machine being built in Southern France, which is [00:03:30] much bigger. We'll get into much higher fusion power up to 500 megawats. And for longer we're talking about up to one hour, but eater is still an experimental reactor. So then we are designing the demo demo is a demonstration fusion power plant. So this is actually going to show that we can produce electricity to fit to the grid
Speaker 1: While the road to fusion power might be long. It's illuminated by exciting milestones, like the recent record broken by jet. We're
Speaker 2: Happy me to announce [00:04:00] results like this, that show that we are on the right path
Speaker 1: As always. Thanks so much for watching I'm your host, Jesse, or see you next time with the fan.
