New World Record Achieved in Harnessing Energy from Nuclear Fusion

The UK-based JET laboratory has set a new world record for energy generated by nuclear fusion, the process that powers the stars. Nuclear fusion is highly sought after as it has the potential to produce large amounts of clean power. Scientists at the lab said that they have achieved unprecedented results in their final experiment after more than four decades of fusion research. The experiment produced 69 megajoules of energy over five seconds, which is equivalent to 11 megawatts of power. While this is a significant achievement, it is clear that there is still a long way to go before nuclear fusion power plants become a reality. Nuclear fusion works by heating and forcing tiny particles together to form a heavier particle, releasing useful energy in the process. If scaled up successfully to commercial levels, fusion energy could generate unlimited amounts of clean energy without carbon emissions, unlike wind and solar power. However, achieving fusion on Earth is not straightforward. The atoms need to be heated to temperatures ten times hotter than the Sun, around 100 million Celsius, and a high density of atoms needs to be maintained for a sufficient amount of time. Despite the progress made at the JET laboratory, the future of the UK's involvement in European fusion research is uncertain. Since Brexit, the UK has been excluded from the Euratom programme, which funded the JET facility. Instead, the UK government has committed £650 million to national research programmes. The European successor to JET, called ITER, will be based in France and is expected to start operations in 2025. However, full-scale experiments are not expected until at least 2035. The UK government plans to build the world's first fusion power plant in Nottinghamshire, with operations beginning in the 2040s. This project, called the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP), will be overseen by the newly established UK Industrial Fusion Solutions.