A nuclear fusion reactor in South Korea recently maintained a temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius for up to 20 seconds, more than doubling the previous research record of less than 10 seconds.
The Korean Superconducting Tomak Advanced Research (KSTAR) is a fusion reactor that uses a magnetic field to generate and stabilize high-temperature plasma, generating large amounts of energy by combining atomic nuclei, contrary to the mechanism used in some nuclear power plants that use nuclear energy. Nuclear energy used in nuclear power plants gets its energy by splitting atomic nuclei.
“Maintaining the plasma at 100 million degrees for a long Time is the key to making fusion energy available,” said nuclear physicist Si-Woo Yoon, one of the leaders of the KSTAR project.
The development of nuclear fusion energy technology has been steadily progressing in recent years. in 2018 KSTAR reached a high temperature of 100 million degrees for the first time, was able to maintain this high temperature for eight seconds in 2019, and has now reached 20 seconds.
KSTAR uses hydrogen isotopes to produce a plasma state, a state in which ions and electrons are separated, much like the nuclear fusion reaction inside the sun, hence the name “artificial sun” for this reaction device.
At present, the use of nuclear fusion as a source of energy is only a possibility, and there are still many technical difficulties, such as how to maintain the high temperature state of plasma for a long time.
Since the raw material for this technology is only seawater with hydrogen isotopes, the process of generating energy without waste is very clean, so it attracts many scientists to devote themselves to research.
The KSTAR project team plans to achieve the goal of maintaining a high temperature of 100 million degrees for up to 300 seconds in 2025.
A report on the experiment has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed research journal, but it will be presented at the IAEA Fusion Energy Conference in 2021.
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