Unleashing Limitless Power: Scientists Set Nuclear Fusion Record [Video]

Scientists just set a nuclear fusion record in a step toward unleashing the limitless, clean energy source

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Scientists and engineers near the English city of Oxford have set a nuclear fusion energy record, they announced Thursday, bringing the clean, futuristic power source another step closer to reality.

Using the Joint European Torus (JET) — a huge, donut-shaped machine known as a tokamak — the scientists sustained a record 69 megajoules of fusion energy for five seconds, using just 0.2 milligrams of fuel. That’s enough to power roughly 12,000 households for the same amount of time.Nuclear fusion is the same process that powers the sun and other stars, and is widely seen as the holy grail of clean energy. Experts have worked for decades to master the highly complex process on Earth, and if they do, fusion could generate enormous amounts of energy with tiny inputs of fuel and emit zero planet-warming carbon in the process.

The scientists fed the tokamak deuterium and tritium, which are hydrogen variants that future commercial fusion plants are most likely to use.To generate fusion energy, the team raised temperatures in the machine to 150 million degrees Celsius — around 10 times hotter than the core of the sun. That extreme heat forces the deuterium and tritium to fuse together and form helium, a process that in turn releases enormous amounts of heat.

The tokamak is lined with strong magnets that hold the plasma in. The heat is then harnessed and used to produce electricity

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