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- cross-posted to:
- world
- [email protected]
There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Professor Barry Green recounts the moment in June 1983 when the JET fusion laboratory in Oxford undertook its first experiment.
The chosen model was tokamak, which uses magnetic fields to confine the plasma - a hot, ionised gas - inside a vessel.
And the hope of producing enough energy to power homes remains a long way off - 59 MJ is only enough to boil about 60 kettles’ worth of water.
Joelle Mailloux is the JET science programme leader overseeing the third round of deuterium-tritium experiments which end on Saturday.
She says the key challenges they are focusing on are making the plasma more stable, spreading the power load and looking at improving materials in the reactor to withstand the conditions.
Paul Methven, STEP programme director at the UK Atomic Energy Agency, told the BBC: "On endeavours like this, you need to be simultaneously really ambitious and also realistic.
The original article contains 669 words, the summary contains 149 words. Saved 78%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!