Nuclear fusion comes two steps closer

Nuclear fusion comes two steps closer

The World Weekly Aristos Georgiou, 11 February 2016 The interior of the Chinese East Tokamak The quest to produce a working nuclear fusion reactor has been the dream of scientists for decades, however, progress has been painfully slow. Within just a few days though, news of two major breakthroughs in the technology has emerged. A … Read more

Fusion: “We’re So Close We Can Taste It”

Fusion: “We’re So Close We Can Taste It”

How we get to next Ian Steadman Feb. 16, 2016 Atomic Energy Authority head Steve Cowley talks tokamaks, tritium, and the tantalizing prospect of enough power for a billion years How close are we to stealing starlight for ourselves? Earlier this month, for the first time ever German scientists at the Max Planck Institute heated … Read more

New experimental facility boosts European research on fusion energy

New experimental facility boosts European research on fusion energy

ec.europa.eu Brussels, 3 February 2016 A key experimental facility in the EU-backed research programme for developing low carbon fusion electricity is inaugurated today in Germany in the presence of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The Wendelstein7-X ‘stellarator’ was completed at the end of 2015 by the Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik in Greifswald with a €1 billion investment, … Read more

At WEST, it’s now time for proposals

At WEST, it’s now time for proposals

ITER Newsline 15 FEB, 2016 On 1 February, a seminar was organized at ITER Headquarters to present the present status of WEST and launch the call for proposals. The WEST platform is open to the international fusion community. A few hundred metres from where the ITER Tokamak Complex is rising, a fusion plasma will light … Read more

Strong endorsement for JET, Fusion Roadmap

Strong endorsement for JET, Fusion Roadmap

Eurofusion.org This picture is a blend of computerised imagery and photography. The European Commission had established a panel of independent high-level experts to evaluate the Euratom research programme which comprises fission and fusion research. The findings, which were recently published, are more than a pat on the back for Europe’s fusion research activities, especially with … Read more

Why the Road to Nuclear Fusion is Necessarily Bumpy

Why the Road to Nuclear Fusion is Necessarily Bumpy

The Wire RONAK GUPTA, 15/02/2016 The Wendelstein 7-X device. Credit: Wikimedia Commons While the realisation of nuclear fusion power is often raked up as a fitting example of a sunk cost fallacy, the amount of work going into realising it someday is as necessary as it is intensive. When the first explosion by a nuclear … Read more

Wendelstein 7-X

Wendelstein 7-X

IPP Wendelstein 7-X at the Greifswald branch of IPP is a large stellarator with modular superconducting coils which enable steady state plasma operation in order to explore the reactor relevance of this concept. The main assembly of Wendelstein 7-X was concluded in 2014. Once all technical systems had been checked step by step the first … Read more

New dawn: Chinese scientists move step closer to creating ‘artificial sun’ in quest for limitless energy via nuclear fusion

New dawn: Chinese scientists move step closer to creating ‘artificial sun’ in quest for limitless energy via nuclear fusion

South China Morning Post Stephen Chen Feb.5, 2016 Chinese scientists were able to heat plasma to three times the temperature of the core of our sun for a record-breaking 102 seconds as they progressed the search to derive energy from nuclear fusion. Photo: Wikipedia In a doughnut-shaped chamber in eastern China, scientists have been able … Read more

China’s “Man-made Sun” Sees Groundbreaking Progress

China’s “Man-made Sun” Sees Groundbreaking Progress

Chinese Academy of Sciences Feb 05, 2016 A team of Chinese scientists in Hefei, capital city of east China’s Anhui Province, has made an unprecedented breakthrough on an energy generation device that will make it one step closer to transform energy into stable, sustainable and controllable resources. The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) fusion device, … Read more