Nuclear Fusion

Nuclear fusion is an incredibly complex scientific problem that researchers are coming at from all sorts of angles, and company Zap Energy is starting to make waves through one of the lesser-known approaches.

While stellarator fusion reactors have conventionally featured irregularly shaped magnetic coils, scientists have now developed simpler and straighter versions they say can offer some important benefits.

Scientists have developed a sensor made of incredibly thin strands of sapphire that can withstand extreme heat and radiation, and possibly be put to work in the harsh environment of nuclear fusion reactors and enable more streamlined air travel.

A UK company says it's demonstrated fusion in record time, on a shoestring US$59 million budget, using an innovative new approach that embeds fuel pellets in tiny, falling cube targets, then shoots projectiles at them at 19 times the speed of sound.

Australian nuclear fusion company HB11 says its disruptive laser-powered reactor design has demonstrated results "many orders of magnitude higher than those reported by any other fusion company," without requiring multi-million degree temperatures.

Oxford-based UK tech firm Tokamak Energy has reached a milestone in privately-funded fusion research after its ST-40 spherical tokamak reactor reached a temperature of 100 million °C (180 million °F), the threshold for commercial fusion energy.

A new technology representing a "revolutionary change" in how magnets are made for tokamak reactors could form a key piece of the nuclear fusion power puzzle, by facilitating the type of sustained streams of plasma needed for it to become a reality.

DeepMind has lent its AI know-how to the quest for nuclear fusion. Through a partnership with scientists at EPFL, the company has developed an AI algorithm that can generate control strategies to create and maintain different plasma configurations.

Scientists at the Joint European Torus (JET) tokamak reactor have smashed the world record for fusion plasma energy output, using the experimental device to generate 59 megajoules of energy in a landmark moment in the quest for nuclear fusion.

For the prospect of limitless, clean energy produced through nuclear fusion to become a reality, scientists need the reactions at the heart of the technology to become self-sustaining, and newly published research has edged them closer to that goal.

Good news for fusion energy progress and a new world record for the Chinese Academy of Sciences, as its Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), or "artifical sun," maintains 70 million degrees Celsius (126 million °F) for 1,056 seconds.

A UK company with lofty aspirations around sustainable space travel has test-fired a rocket engine powered in part by plastic waste. Pulsar Fusion's ambitious plans also involve the development of nuclear fusion technology for high-speed propulsion.