![]() The idea initially arose as a class project in a nuclear engineering class taught by Whyte. This design was made possible by a new kind of superconducting material that became commercially available a few years ago. The major innovation in the MIT-CFS fusion design is the use of high-temperature superconductors, which enable a much stronger magnetic field in a smaller space. Most of these devices have produced their magnetic fields using conventional electromagnets made of copper, but the latest and largest version under construction in France, called ITER, uses what are known as low-temperature superconductors. Because the particles have an electric charge, they are strongly controlled by the magnetic fields, and the most widely used configuration for containing them is a donut-shaped device called a tokamak. That’s done through intense magnetic fields, which form a kind of invisible bottle to contain the hot swirling soup of protons and electrons, called a plasma. To capture the sun’s power source here on Earth, what’s needed is a way of capturing and containing something that hot - 100,000,000 degrees or more - by suspending it in a way that prevents it from coming into contact with anything solid. But the process requires temperatures far beyond what any solid material could withstand. “It’s really a watershed moment, I believe, in fusion science and technology,” he says.įusion is the process that powers the sun: the merger of two small atoms to make a larger one, releasing prodigious amounts of energy. Whyte, who is the Hitachi America Professor of Engineering, says this week’s demonstration represents a major milestone, addressing the biggest questions remaining about the feasibility of the SPARC design. ![]() It’s really a fundamentally new energy source.” But once the technology is proven, he says, “it’s an inexhaustible, carbon-free source of energy that you can deploy anywhere and at any time. “The challenges of making fusion happen are both technical and scientific,” says Dennis Whyte, director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, which is working with CFS to develop SPARC. That demonstration device, called SPARC, is targeted for completion in 2025. With the magnet technology now successfully demonstrated, the MIT-CFS collaboration is on track to build the world’s first fusion device that can create and confine a plasma that produces more energy than it consumes. #Fission energy how to#We just have to figure out how to utilize it.”ĭeveloping the new magnet is seen as the greatest technological hurdle to making that happen its successful operation now opens the door to demonstrating fusion in a lab on Earth, which has been pursued for decades with limited progress. #Fission energy full#“The amount of power that is available is really game-changing.” The fuel used to create fusion energy comes from water, and “the Earth is full of water - it’s a nearly unlimited resource. “Fusion in a lot of ways is the ultimate clean energy source,” says Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research and E. That advance paves the way, they say, for the long-sought creation of practical, inexpensive, carbon-free power plants that could make a major contribution to limiting the effects of global climate change. That successful demonstration helps resolve the greatest uncertainty in the quest to build the world’s first fusion power plant that can produce more power than it consumes, according to the project’s leaders at MIT and startup company Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS). 5, for the first time, a large high-temperature superconducting electromagnet was ramped up to a field strength of 20 tesla, the most powerful magnetic field of its kind ever created on Earth. Developing technology to harness nuclear fusion as a source of energy for heat and electricity generation is the subject of ongoing research, but whether or not it will be a commercially viable technology is not yet clear because of the difficulty in controlling a fusion reaction.It was a moment three years in the making, based on intensive research and design work: On Sept. Fusion is the source of energy in the sun and stars. ![]() Nuclear energy can also be released in nuclear fusion, where atoms are combined or fused together to form a larger atom. This reaction is controlled in nuclear power plant reactors to produce a desired amount of heat. This process is called a nuclear chain reaction. These neutrons continue to collide with other uranium atoms, and the process repeats itself over and over again. ![]() More neutrons are also released when a uranium atom splits. During nuclear fission, a neutron collides with a uranium atom and splits it, releasing a large amount of energy in the form of heat and radiation. All nuclear power plants use nuclear fission, and most nuclear power plants use uranium atoms. In nuclear fission, atoms are split apart, which releases energy. ![]()
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