China overtakes Germany to make nuclear fusion breakthrough: Reactor creates conditions THREE times hotter than the sun

China overtakes Germany to make nuclear fusion breakthrough: Reactor creates conditions THREE times hotter than the sun

Daily Mail By ELLIE ZOLFAGHARIFARD, Feb 6th 2016 Test was conducted on a magnetic fusion reactor known as EAST Chinese team were able to maintain 50 million°C for 102 seconds The breakthrough that could someday make fusion power a reality Last week Germany used 2 megawatts of microwave radiation to heat hydrogen gas to 80 … Read more

Nuclear fusion device’s 1st test with hydrogen declared a success

Nuclear fusion device’s 1st test with hydrogen declared a success

CBC News The Associated Press Posted: Feb 03, 2016 Wendelstein 7-X stellarator in Greifswald successfully generated a plasma for a fraction of a second A plant creates plasma from hydrogen for the first time, at the Wendelstein 7-X nuclear fusion research centre of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald, Germany, Wednesday Feb. … Read more

Fusion Stellarator Wendelstein 7-x Fires Up for Real

Fusion Stellarator Wendelstein 7-x Fires Up for Real

IEEE Spectrum By Alexander Hellemans 3 Feb 2016 Hydrogen plasma navigates the tortuous turns of the stellarator. Today the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, at a ceremony at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma physics in Greifswald in Germany, pressed a button that caused a two-megawatt pulse of microwave radiation to heat hydrogen gas to 80 … Read more

EMC2 revives its quest for nuclear fusion

EMC2 revives its quest for nuclear fusion

Geekwire BY ALAN BOYLE on January 29, 2016 Plasma glows inside EMC2 Fusion’s test device during a high-energy shot in 2013. (Credit: EMC2 Fusion) After languishing in limbo for most of the last year, EMC2 Fusion Development Corp. says it’s back in business with an unorthodox concept for nuclear fusion power plants. The concept is … Read more

Nuclear fusion gets boost from private-sector startups

Nuclear fusion gets boost from private-sector startups

Science News Jan. 29, 2016 by Alan Boyle Magazine issue: Vol. 189, No. 3, February 6, 2016, p. 18 Startups bring a new attitude to the energy quest — will it be enough? RENEGADE FUSION Private-sector startups, like General Fusion, are betting they can develop an energy source for the future faster than government-funded projects. … Read more

International team turns on world’s largest stellarator

International team turns on world’s largest stellarator

LANL Glen Wurden in the stellarator’s vacuum vessel during camera installation in 2014. LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Jan. 27, 2015—Since the world’s largest superconducting magnetic fusion experiment, the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator, went online in December, innovative new imaging systems designed at Los Alamos National Laboratory are helping physicists peer into the roiling world of superhot plasmas … Read more

How nuclear fusion could unlock Thailand’s energy dilemma

How nuclear fusion could unlock Thailand’s energy dilemma

The Nation John Draper, Peerasit Kamnuansilpa January 28, 2016 A ‘clean’ alternative to fossil fuels and atomic fission could be less than a decade away According to the Thai Ministry of Energy’s Integrated Blueprint, up to 5 per cent of the country’s energy requirements will be met by nuclear power by 2036. Nuclear power has … Read more

Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the tritium shot heard around the world

Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the tritium shot heard around the world

America led worldwide fusion energy records through TFTR decommissioning in 1997 PPPL By John Greenwald, December 9, 2013 Republished here Jan. 26, 2016 PPPL staffers monitor a closed-circuit screen during the historic 1993 experiment. Tensions rose in the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) as the seconds counted down. At stake … Read more

Where Is Fusion Research Today?

Where Is Fusion Research Today?

Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings 21/01/2016 by Susanne Dambeck On the one hand, there is the promise of limitless energy supply, emission-free and without the long-term radiation problems of nuclear fission. The idea behind it is simple: In the Sun, the nuclei of hydrogen atoms are continuously fused into helium nuclei. This process releases enormous amounts … Read more