Nuclear fusion reactor in South Korea runs at 100 million degrees C for a record-brea

[Boats]

Nuclear fusion reactor in South Korea runs at 100 million degrees C for a record-breaking 48 seconds
By: Ben Turner published 1 hour ago - Staff writer for Live Science.
Re: https://www.livescience.com/physics-...ing-48-seconds

The experimental fusion reactor sustained temperatures of 180 million degrees Fahrenheit for a record-
breaking 48 seconds.

1st Photo link: https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/rD...50-80.jpg.webp
A view inside the KSTAR reactor chamber. (Image credit: Korea Institute of Fusion Energy (KFE))

Note: South Korea's "artificial sun" has set a new fusion record after superheating a plasma loop to 180
million degrees Fahrenheit (100 million degrees Celsius) for 48 seconds, scientists have announced.

The Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) reactor broke the previous world record
of 31 seconds, which was set by the same reactor in 2021.The breakthrough is a small but impressive step
on the long road to a source of near-unlimited clean energy.

Scientists have been trying to harness the power of nuclear fusion — the process by which stars burn —
for more than 70 years. By fusing hydrogen atoms to make helium under extremely high pressures and
at temperatures, so-called main-sequence stars convert matter into light and heat, generating enormous
amounts of energy without producing greenhouse gases or long-lasting radioactive waste.

But replicating the conditions found inside the hearts of stars is no simple task. The most common design
for fusion reactors — the tokamak — works by superheating plasma (one of the four states of matter,
consisting of positive ions and negatively charged free electrons) and trapping it inside a donut-shaped
reactor chamber with powerful magnetic fields.

Keeping the turbulent and superheated coils of plasma in place long enough for nuclear fusion to happen,
however, has been a painstaking process. Soviet scientist Natan Yavlinsky designed the first tokamak in
1958, but no one has ever managed to create a reactor that is able to put out more energy than it takes in.

Related: Nuclear fusion reactor in UK sets new world record for energy output

One of the main stumbling blocks has been how to handle a plasma that's hot enough to fuse.
Fusion reactors require very high temperatures — many times hotter than the sun — because they have
to operate at much lower pressures than where fusion naturally takes place inside the cores of stars.
The core of the actual sun, for example, reaches temperatures of around 27 million F (15 million C)
but has pressures roughly equal to 340 billion times the air pressure at sea level on Earth.

But replicating the conditions found inside the hearts of stars is no simple task. The most common design
for fusion reactors — the tokamak — works by superheating plasma (one of the four states of matter,
consisting of positive ions and negatively charged free electrons) and trapping it inside a donut-shaped
reactor chamber with powerful magnetic fields.

Keeping the turbulent and superheated coils of plasma in place long enough for nuclear fusion to happen,
however, has been a painstaking process. Soviet scientist Natan Yavlinsky designed the first tokamak in
1958, but no one has ever managed to create a reactor that is able to put out more energy than it takes
in.

Related: Nuclear fusion reactor in UK sets new world record for energy output

One of the main stumbling blocks has been how to handle a plasma that's hot enough to fuse.
Fusion reactors require very high temperatures — many times hotter than the sun — because they have
to operate at much lower pressures than where fusion naturally takes place inside the cores of stars.
The core of the actual sun, for example, reaches temperatures of around 27 million F (15 million C) but
has pressures roughly equal to 340 billion times the air pressure at sea level on Earth.

2nd Photo link: https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/5o...70-80.jpg.webp
A photo of South Korea's KSTAR nuclear fusion reactor. (Image credit: Korea Institute of Fusion Energy (KFE)

Cooking plasma to these temperatures is the relatively easy part, but finding a way to corral it so that
it doesn't burn through the reactor without also ruining the fusion process is technically tricky.
This is usually done either with lasers or magnetic fields.

To extend their plasma's burning time from the previous record-breaking run, the scientists tweaked aspects
of their reactor's design, including replacing carbon with tungsten to improve the efficiency of the Tokamak’s
"divertors," which extract heat and ash from the reactor.

"Despite being the first experiment run in the environment of the new tungsten diverter's, thorough hardware
testing and campaign preparation enabled us to achieve results surpassing those of previous KSTAR records
in a short period," Si-Woo Yoon, the director of the KSTAR Research Center, said in a statement.

KSTAR scientists are aiming to push the reactor to sustain temperatures of 180 million F for 300 seconds by 2026.

The record joins others made by competing fusion reactors around the world, including one by the U.S.
government-funded National Ignition Facility (NIF), which sparked headlines after the reactor core briefly
put out more energy than was put into it.

[About this writer: Ben Turner is a U.K. based staff writer at Live Science. He covers physics and astronomy,
among other topics like tech and climate change. He graduated from University College London with a degree
in particle physics before training as a journalist. When he's not writing, Ben enjoys reading literature, playing
the guitar and embarrassing himself with chess.]
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Related stories & links - also available - onsite links available - if interested.
— Fusion experiment smashes record for generating energy, takes us a step closer to a new source of power

— 2nd nuclear fusion breakthrough brings us a (tiny) step closer to limitless clean energy

— 1st evidence of nuclear fission in stars hints at elements 'never produced on Earth'
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Personal note: Whatever is enough? Had an incident happened during the test
God only know how far the radiation would spread in the area - as well as the
atmosphere!?
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This is one job I wouldn't want - no matter how well it paid!
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Boats