Fusion

MIT scientists have demonstrated how some of the biggest advances in nuclear fusion might come via projects that are smaller in stature, with the team revealing a record-setting superconductive magnet set for testing in a compact reactor in 2025.

Physicists have confirmed a major advance in the performance of the Wendelstein 7-X fusion reactor, with efforts to address inherent energy losses in the design potentially enabling the reactor to host plasma twice as hot as the Sun's core.

"Extraordinary results" from experiments with an extraordinarily high-powered laser have just taken us a whole lot closer to the goal of fusion ignition, where the energy generated through nuclear fusion is enough to trigger a runaway effect.

Chinese state media is reporting that scientists working on the EAST experimental nuclear fusion reactor have achieved a new world record by holding plasma of 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds in their latest round of experiments.

For nearly a century, scientists have been tantalized by the prospect of attaining an inexhaustible source of energy through nuclear fusion. Achieving this goal is not so easy, as it turns out, but that doesn't mean exciting advances aren't being made.

Scientists have made a breakthrough in the way we study this plasma, managing to trap an ultracold form of it in a magnetic "bottle" for the first time, an achievement that could act as a springboard for research into nuclear fusion energy.

Now is the time, says a new report commissioned by the US Dept of Energy, for "urgent" government and private sector investment in a pilot fusion power plant on US soil by 2040. The report also lays out the key technical challenges that need solving.

In a promising development for tokamak-based nuclear fusion technology, the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) fusion device has set a world record by maintaining plasma at over 100 million °C for 20 seconds.

The UK government is looking for a site on which to build the world's first prototype commercial fusion power plant, which it hopes to have operational by 2040. If you think sounds ambitious, you're right.

Borexino, a huge underground particle detector in Italy, has picked up a never-before-seen type of neutrino coming from the Sun. These neutrinos confirm a 90-year-old hypothesis and complete our picture of the fusion cycle of the Sun and other stars.

Lured by the prospect of nearly inexhaustible source of clean energy, scientists have been investigating nuclear fusion reactors for decades, but a new facility taking shape in southern France will provide them with their biggest proving ground yet.

"We are sidestepping all of the scientific challenges that have held fusion energy back for more than half a century," says the director of an Australian company whose hydrogen-boron fusion technology is working a billion times better than expected.