Stars in the middle range of mass have a distinct core where fusion takes place, which limits the available supply of hydrogen to fuse into helium. All stars begin their lives in dense interstellar clouds of gas and dust. Much of their future life and structure is determined by the way they form. A star is defined by nuclear fusion in its core, and before fusion begins, an object that will become a star is known as a young stellar object. High-mass stars can fuse elements heavier than carbon. As a massive star nears the end of its evolution, its interior resembles an onion. Hydrogen fusion is taking place in an outer. In a massive star, hydrogen fusion in the core is followed by several other fusion reactions involving heavier elements. Just before exhausting all sources of energy, a massive star has an iron core. Once a star has reached the main-sequence stage of its life, it derives its energy almost entirely from the conversion of hydrogen to helium via the process of nuclear fusion in its core.
Heavy elements are produced by nucleosysthesis, the fusion of nuclei deep within the cores of stars. Nuclear fusion separates stars and brown dwarfs from Jupiter-like objects. The Milky Way galaxy contains several hundred billion stars of various ages, sizes, and masses. A star forms when a dense cloud of gas collapses until hydrogen fusion reactions that convert hydrogen to helium have consumed all the hydrogen in the core of the star. Main sequence stars are fusing hydrogen into helium in their cores.
Girls have defied full explanation for decades, especially when they’re near the end of their lives. Stars power themselves through nuclear fusion, from the smashing together of lighter elements into heavier ones.
📹 We Went Inside the Largest Nuclear Fusion Reactor
Presenter and Narrator – Fred Mills Producer – Jaden Urbi Video Editing – Aaron Wood Graphics – Vince North Content Partnership …
What is the difference between a giant and a supergiant star?
Giant stars are subclasses of stars with different masses and temperatures. Supergiant stars have larger radii and brightness due to their larger masses and temperatures. Red giants have low temperatures but great brightness, while subgiants have slightly reduced radii and brightness. Supergiant stars are stars of great intrinsic luminosity and enormous size, typically several magnitudes brighter than giant stars and several times greater in diameter.
They are tenuous stars with lifetimes of only a few million years, which is extremely short on the scale of stellar evolution. The distinction between giants, supergiants, and other classes is made by examining certain lines in the stars’ spectra.
Do bigger stars have more nuclear fusion?
The larger the star, the greater the fuel supply; however, this must be burned at a faster rate to maintain equilibrium. This phenomenon can be attributed to the occurrence of thermonuclear fusion at a more rapid rate, which ultimately results in a shorter lifespan. In contrast, smaller stars have a lower fuel supply but a slower fusion rate, which results in a longer lifespan. Consequently, the longevity of a star is not contingent upon its size, as the rate of fuel consumption is not as rapid in larger stars.
What type of fusion is a giant star?
A red giant forms when a star runs out of hydrogen fuel for nuclear fusion and begins dying. This process can take hundreds of millions of years and applies to intermediate mass stars, which go on to form planetary nebulae. When a more massive star runs out of hydrogen at its core, it forms a red supergiant before exploding as a supernova.
Hubble uses red giant stars to calculate distances to different galaxies by comparing the brightness of the galaxies’ red giant stars with nearby stars, whose distances have been measured by other methods. Red giants are reliable milepost markers, reaching the same peak brightness in their late evolution, and can be used as a “standard candle” to calculate distance. Hubble’s exquisite sharpness and sensitivity allowed it to find red giants in the stellar halos of the galaxies.
Hubble has observed U Camelopardalis, which coughs out a nearly spherical shell of gas as a layer of helium around its core begins to fuse every few thousand years. The shell of gas, much larger and fainter than its parent star, is visible in intricate detail thanks to Hubble’s sensitivity. The telescope has observed that the shell of gas expelled from this red giant is almost perfectly spherical, indicating that red giants are a common phenomenon in astronomy.
What do massive stars fuse?
Nuclear fusion occurs when the core reaches temperatures in excess of 100 million degrees Celsius, whereby hydrogen atoms are converted into helium, which is responsible for the energy, luminosity, and color projection observed in massive stars.
What is the biggest element that can be fused inside a star?
Iron is the largest element that can fuse inside a star. Once it reaches this point, it is unable to fuse into heavier elements, which results in an unstable core. This energy prevents the collapse of the star by counteracting the force of gravity, which would otherwise cause the star to explode.
Is nuclear fusion safe?
Fusion reactions are a self-limiting process that relies on continuous fuel input and is highly sensitive to working conditions. They produce only low-level radioactive waste, which poses no serious danger. Contaminated items like protective clothing, cleaning supplies, and medical tubes can be safely handled with basic precautions. Most experimental fusion devices use a mix of deuterium and tritium as fuel, with tritium having a half-life of 12. 3 years.
Neutrons are released during the fusion reaction, which impact and absorb the wall surrounding the reactor core, making it radioactive. Tritium is then reinjected into the machine. While fusion and fission facilities share similarities in handling radioactive material and cooling systems, differences with fusion, such as reduced amount and variety of radioactive material, impossibility of core meltdown conditions, and lack of long-lived waste, should be identified and addressed.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is helping to facilitate these efforts. ITER, the world’s largest fusion experiment, has gathered experts from 35 countries to work towards making fusion energy sources a reality and solving fusion’s safety and security challenges.
Why does fusion only happen in massive stars?
For stars larger than the sun, gravitational collapse triggers a nuclear fusion of helium in their core, forming carbon, neon, and oxygen. When helium is exhausted, collapse triggers the fusion of heavier elements, forming an onion-like structure. This progression ends when iron dominates the stellar core, as stars aren’t massive enough to trigger its fusion. Iron is an extremely stable element, and stars aren’t massive enough to trigger its fusion.
Does nuclear fusion occur inside stars?
In the core of a star like the Sun, fusion occurs through the proton-proton chain, a multi-step process where six protons fuse together to form a helium nucleus and two protons. This process is not rendering properly due to an incompatible browser. The hydrogen ions, also known as hydrogen nuclei, are referred to as free protons. The deuterium ions or nuclei are hydrogen ions or nuclei. The 3-helium ions or nuclei are 3-helium ions or nuclei. The gamma ray photons are created when positrons, the anti-particle equivalents of electrons, annihilate when they encounter electrons.
The equations for hydrogen ions, hydrogen nuclei, free protons, deuterium ions, 3-helium ions, and positrons are not rendering properly due to an incompatible browser. The correct browser for these equations is listed in the Technical Requirements in the Orientation.
What is fused in a supergiant star?
Stars larger than eight times the mass of our Sun begin their lives by fusing hydrogen into helium. However, a large star burns hotter and faster, fusing all the hydrogen in its core to helium in less than 1 billion years. This process creates a red supergiant, similar to a red giant, with greater gravitational pressure and higher core temperatures. These supergiants fuse helium into carbon, carbon and helium into oxygen, and two carbon atoms into magnesium.
Three successive heavier elements, up to iron, are formed through a combination of processes that require higher temperatures and last for a shorter time. The structure of a red supergiant becomes like an onion, with different elements being fused at different temperatures in layers around the core. Convection brings elements near the star’s surface, where strong stellar winds disperse them into space.
Fusion continues in red supergiants until iron is formed. Iron releases no energy when fused, as it has the most stable nucleus of all the elements. Elements lighter than iron generally emit energy if fused, while elements heavier than iron emit energy if they undergo fission. The “Binding Energy Per Nucleon” chart illustrates this.
Fusion does not go beyond iron because the temperatures required become so high that the nuclei “melt” before they can fuse. This thermal energy breaks silicon nuclei into separate helium nuclei, which combine with elements like chlorine, argon, potassium, and calcium to create elements from titanium through iron.
Is cold fusion possible?
Cold fusion is a hypothetical type of nuclear reaction that occurs at or near room temperature, unlike the “hot” fusion that occurs naturally within stars and artificially in hydrogen bombs and prototype fusion reactors under immense pressure and temperatures of millions of degrees. In 1989, two electrochemists at the University of Utah reported producing anomalous heat, which they believed would defy explanation except in terms of nuclear processes. They also measured small amounts of nuclear reaction byproducts, including neutrons and tritium.
The reported results received wide media attention and raised hopes of a cheap and abundant source of energy. However, hopes faded with the large number of negative replications, withdrawal of many reported positive replications, the discovery of flaws and sources of experimental error in the original experiment, and the discovery that Fleischmann and Pons had not actually detected nuclear reaction byproducts. By late 1989, most scientists considered cold fusion claims dead, and cold fusion gained a reputation as pathological science.
In 1989, the United States Department of Energy (DOE) concluded that the reported results of excess heat did not present convincing evidence of a useful source of energy and decided against allocating funding specifically for cold fusion. A second DOE review in 2004 reached similar conclusions and did not result in DOE funding of cold fusion.
Currently, articles about cold fusion are rarely published in peer-reviewed mainstream scientific journals, attracting less scrutiny than expected for mainstream scientific publications.
Why can’t stars fuse iron?
Big stars burn hydrogen quickly, resulting in a central core with helium. Gravity pressure forces the star to smash helium together, resulting in Beryllium, which is less massive than 2 Helium atoms. This mass converts to more energy, leading to increased heat and expansion. As the star runs out of helium, it smashes Beryllium, Carbon, Oxygen, and Sulfur together, burning hotter and bigger until suddenly, the core becomes iron. Iron stops fusing together, but the heavier atoms absorb energy.
The outer atmosphere of the star falls back to the core faster, smashing down on the iron ball. This gravitational energy crushes the atoms together, causing the star to explode into a massive ball of glowing atoms from Hydrogen to Uranium.
Really big stars, like those 40 times our sun’s mass, don’t even go “BOOM”; they create a Black Hole with an escape velocity greater than the speed of light. Most stars are binaries, two stars revolving around a common center of gravity, which can have an interesting way of going “BOOM”.
📹 Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy – BBC News
European scientists say they have made a major breakthrough in their quest to develop practical nuclear fusion – the energy …
Nice to see you covering this project! It is so monumental both on an engineering level and on a potentially world changing way but so underrepresented and underreported in media when everyone is talking about clean energy. Everyone of their publication always go under the radar, maybe with your coverage they’ll get a bit more visibility!
I am in awe of what humans are capable of when they work together peacefully toward a common goal! The size and complexity of this project gives me chills, my mouth is open and I become speechless. As a safety professional I can not imagine the daily challenges in supervising and managing such a project. What an honor to work on this and participate in history that will change the future dramatically. Can’t wait for this technology to be developed.
I love your website so much Fred, and you just may be inspiring me to get back to making articles. I have over 200 career mentorship articles for engineering students and have been back in the engineering industry for two years. I am getting the YouTube itch again and have been learning a looottttt about nuclear, concrete’s role in our worldwide carbon footprint, how close we are to starting a Moon colony, etc. Hope to meet you one day!
This brings back memories of my youth, working at a nuclear power plant and having assignments like working underneath the newly installed reactor on the sacrificial shield walls, the refueling pools, containment vessel and condenser units. What an amazing work environment for a new, 19 year old apprentice boilermaker! From a hundred feet below grade to hundreds of feet above- every day was a new opportunity to learn and improve my skills. After a lifetime of work across North America, I still get a chill down my spine when I see an exciting construction project like ITER.
Great article, I wish more people were aware of this project. But I’ve gotta be that guy…I’m 60 years old and for as long I can remember being aware of fusion power (in my teens), it’s always been 20 years away. This article literally added my next 20-year setpoint for net usable power at the 7:53 point. Of course, that’s no reason stop working on it. It will eventually happen, and we desperately need it. Hopefully tech advances make the jump from pilot project to usable in the next 2 decades happen!
Outstandingly promising job! Especially, when one thinks of all the calamities and adverse feelings that oil and gas fuels engendered since its discovery. My sole hope is that the access to such an energy would not we confined to only a handful of nations, but rather be global. Otherwise, there is not much difference from contemporary fuels, if the wars will proceed to take place.
It’s worth saying that while fusion energy would be beyond revolutionary in many ways, fission is already essentially carbon free and with danger statistics generally in the same range as wind and solar power, despite “harmful” nuclear waste. Truthfully, if we built enough nuclear plants to sustain most of our energy needs right now, there wouldn’t be all that much of an issue (certainly far less than the issues associated with using fossil fuels for power). The amount of waste produced would be quite manageable and so in many ways, fission is already capable of many benefits that fusion is often credited with, for the most part. Certainly not all- fusion energy as I said originally would be more than a revolution. As far as necessity dictates for our current energy situation though, fission would be sufficient if the general public stopped thinking nuclear waste was green goo and that reactors go off like atomic bombs when there is any minor error (they don’t do that at all, it’s impossible). While I love fusion and think it 100% deserves as much funding as it reasonable, fission could fix fossil fuels within the time that fusion might or might not only be proven, let alone turned into commercially viable energy plants. Fusion is the energy of the future, and right now we need to be using the energy of today–fission, wind, solar, etc–to get rid of the energy of the past, as soon as reasonably achievable.
“It doesn’t get cooler than that”. From the thermodynamics POV, since the actual physical cold components, the superconducting magnets @ ~4.3K, just about where the speaker was standing, will be about 3 meters away from the fusing plasma @~150 million K, the thermal gradient (DT) will be ~50° million K/meter. This will be quite possibly among the steepest such gradients in the known universe. To oversimplify, the maximum energy output of any heat engine is fundamentally limited by the steepness and height of it’s internal energy gradient. Various losses further reduce actual output of course, but DT is the fundamental parameter wether the source is fossil, fission or fusion. Therefore, comparing the DT across sources is a useful way illustrating why so much effort, time and treasure are being spent chasing this rainbow. DT for HPW fission is only a few hundred °K/M for instance, similar within a factor 3 or 4 to gasoline engines. Of course, the hiding places of the Devil are well known, and ultimately the purpose of ITER is to ferret out his imps. This is an EXPERIMENTAL device. It’s intended product is information not electricity, and it will serve every other fusion project by verfying known principles and extending theory into previously inacessible physical regiems. It was never meant to boil teapots.
Nonstop phenomenal presentation! You brilliantly tell us how important this project is, the science, and the scope of this multi-country collaboration. However, I am interested in the long-term maintenance and care of something this gigantic. What are the potential problems, what troubleshooting technologies are in place to safeguard the people and environments against catastrophe, and what plans are in place for evacuating the population in case of an emergency?
It is truly cool construction site and should be pursued as scientific/engineering challenge. There is very little hope that Fusion will contribute to decarbonisation in time as it will take at least some 20years from ITER to possible demonstrator and then possible power reactors. Even if it works there will be little hope for fusion power to be cheaper than coal, easier to build than current fission reactors. And still Fusion will generate radioactive materials- so few facts that fusion enthusiasts forget to mention. In the meantime Fission power took about 10years from discovery of neutron, understanding what isotopes really are to first reactor build. Not for a moment there were doubts or chalenges in getting more power from fission than inputs in materials or reaction. Radioactive materials are fairly easy to be contained, recycle into fuel (for the parts that stay radioactive for thousands of years=actinides which are great fuel for IVgen reactors), or will decay to safe materials in few hundreds of years (fission products). It also is possible to make such power plants cheaper than coal (as it was before and should be possible in the future with well developed and executed national plans). There are also proven cases when with the use of nuclear fission countries got rid of using coal and reduced use of NatGas by a lot(France, Sweeden, Finland, provinces of Canada) and big progress has been done in about 15years like in France.
I only have one complaint. I wish you would do a series on this. Break down all the different systems and engineering challenges and do a article on each of them. Then check out different companies who are also trying to produce fusion energy. This is so big and so important to literally everyone on this planet.
8-year old me that discovered nuclear energy in old Yugoslavian encyclopedia is sheading tears of joy inside of 37-year old me, who can’t believe how much good stuff you managed to squeeze in less than 10 minutes. This proect, among with other fusion attempts, is the epithomy of everything science and engineering should be about – ambitious, immense projects with an obvious purpose of eleveting our existence and pushing human kind further. Best YouTube website, by far. Fred, you are a gem.
Nice way of perpetuating the myth that nuclear waste from current reactors is somehow not processed into intert materials or stored completely safely on-site with a million regulations precisely because the wrong public perception of nuclear waste made the industry’s standards for dealing with it so high. I get that fusion is a nice idea, but it’s been precisely that, a nice idea, for nigh-on a century now. Hopefully it can be more in the future but we have a legitimate, safe and clean method of producing energy in nuclear reactors and have done so for decades now, there’s no need to disparage a working method to make a new method sound more appealing.
I’m no expert in this, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t the voltage that strips the electrons from the nucleus, but rather the insane temperatures. The superconducting electromagnets are for stabilising the plasma to keep it floating inside the vacuum chamber. If the plasma touches the actual reactor, the walls will instantly vaporize from the heat, so they keep it floating with the magnets.
Wow this is just super amazing!!! Imagine when this project becomes a success it will surely open lots and lots of amazing scientific and technological discoveries and advancements most specially in energy resources. It will definitely be beneficial for the whole world and most especially to mother earth. 😊
Fred, thank you for showing us a glimpse of ITER project. I’ve been reading a couple of papers and journals about fusion energy. Really hoping this project will succeed and be used as our carbon-free source of energy for the future. The way you expressed yourself on the last few clips of this article, I couldn’t help but feel as excited as you are for this new technology! Keep it up B1M!
I have been talking about fusion for so many years now. When she said “there is no other solution it demands fusion” I couldn’t agree more. There is NO other rational or logical option for humanities insatiable need for power. The only way we do not destroy ourselves and permanently extinguish the only known form of consciousness in the universe is to harness fusion power. So few talk about this and fewer still even realise just how critical to everything this problem is. I hope we get there but time is close to running out.
There was a dramatic new containment magnet tested last year that makes future tokamak designs 10x more powerful for a given size. This may allow a 200+MW reactor possible before 2035 and may be a better economic deal than coal plants due to having no air pollution If this pans out in the test reactor SPARC in about 2025 we will have technology on hand to make tokamaks commercially relevant and only need one more major advance to make them commercially mainstream, even as the alternative designs are also being rapidly tested with better economic potential
As a European I’m so proud that the EU is the lead nation managing and funding this megaproject, providing just under half the funding for ITER. It really is an amazing project and the engineers, scientists and project managers working on this deserve our full support. In years to come, when fusion has been commercialised we’ll all look back on ITER as the biggest scientific success of the 21st century, perhaps even ever.
Fusion is always just 10 years into the future, and when the 10 years have past, we just move the goalpost another 10 years. Fission reactors is perfectly fine, clean, powerful and the safest source of energy available. Of course there should still be research into fusion though, as it is the holy grail of energy.
“the head of the Department of Energy and other federal scientific leaders announced that a fusion reaction they ran at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California achieved net energy, meaning the reaction generated more energy than was put in to initiate the reaction. It’s the first time humankind has achieved this landmark.” December 13th, 9 months later, we did it
As as the moment, Fusion also produces radioactive isotopes as it needs Tritium which are currently produced in Fission nuclear reactors. We won’t see fusion in commercial scale probably for the next 40-50 years, hence for now the Fission is plenty ok to fight climate change. Nuclear waste can be used to power fast neutrons reactors, which do exists already. The only issue with Nuclear fission is just how people see it. But it’s nothing dangerous or dirt as people think it is. Actually, you end up using lesser materials and lesser land than you would otherwise need with renewables.
Let’s say ITER is finished in 2026 successful Fusion achieved in 2030 and more energy extracted then put in also in 2030. Then what still will take 20 years to decide, plan,build, and test an operational Fusion reactor so 2050 before the First operational Fusion reactor for the power grid is built and at this stage there’s only going to be a handful of these reactors in the world. So another 20 years until there’s hundreds of these reactors powering every city on earth. 2070 is the year a good portion Earths Energy will be produced by Fusion reactors. Really is only a short amount of time to wait because after 2070 it’s unlimited Energy forever want more power build more Fusion reactors. Major problem in humans enter time on earth is not handing enough energy. Fusion should finally fix this problem.
It seems weird that they would commit so much to a massive project based on a technology that hasn’t even been shown to work on a smaller scale. What if they get it all built and still end up with no solution for how to make it work in a practical sense? Will they just say, “Oops, oh well, that’s tens of billions of dollars wasted, but at least we tried!”? Why wouldn’t it make sense to start with a more modestly sized attempt?
I’ll be honest – I didn’t watch the entire article, but if they can’t get fusion to be stable for a long time on a small scale, why are they wasting money on a big scale? Fusion was always touted as ‘just a few years away’, several decades ago. To date, it has yet to put a single watt into the power grid.
The trouble is the timing of getting to net energy/ commercial fusion, versus the timing of the worst of climate change. I hold out more hope that a small start up will achieve net energy fusion instead of ITER, which will likely become a museum piece. Maybe they can even have a roller coaster ride thru its incomplete hulk.
The things humans achieve without conflict and war are astounding. I know technology tends to develop fastest in the context of the military….imagine a war-free world, where progressing science and industry was treated with the same feverish favouritism as war currently is. Instead of dodgy politicians and monolithic military contracts with the likes of Lockheed Martin, it’d be eccentric scientists and news of all the jobs created by scientific research and discovery.
Sssssoooooooooo you guys are going to try to do what Dr. Otto Octopus (Octavia) did in the Spider-Man franchise? Ooooooooohhhhhhhhhhh god why do I suddenly have a very bad feeling about this? Oooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhh gggggggoooooooodddddddd….. SPIDER-MAN!!!!!!!??????? SOMEONE GET ME SPIDER-MAN!!!!!!!!!
Being from the south of France, I was raised knowing that ITER was right there and I’ve always been amazed and a little scared of what was happening nearby! So cool to see that the future is in good hands. Those good news show that humans are resilients and not only bad things are happening in this world!
The Eu kinda reminds me of the US now lmfao Massive government project like ITER which basically require components from all sorts of countries instead of just being made in a single country. Kinda like how F16’s and Boeings are made in random different states and basically have to be moved to a single area. i understand countries wanting to participate in ITER, but damn it would be so much easier if everything was just made in France. But then again, its Europe. Prolly best keep it this way lol
Personally i never worry about global warming of anything like that. 1. Because i know i alone can do nothing of any significance to prevention of global warming. And 2. Because of projects like this most likely solving the carbon emissions issue within my life time. So eco warriors, calm down. It’s going to happen no matter what.
The article skips over two important points: This is not intended to supply power; it’s strictly a demonstrator/science experiment. A REALLY expensive science experiment that they HOPE will show tech that can then be used to make actual commercial reactors. Two, they aren’t even close to done. Initial operations isn’t PLANNED until 2035, and that’s if they stick to schedule, with no political/funding/technical issues. The Apollo program, this isn’t.
Yes correction, that statement was completely and purposely wrong. Nuclear Fusion can not be weaponised where as Nuclear Fission can which is why back in the 1920’s believe it or not the US had two working prototypes and chose fission over fusion FACT. With the use of bordered Quantum AI this new Fusion Reactor will be successful I mean it’s not like they didn’t already have this technology. By the way, this is not being built for us the “Useless Eater” This is yet more evidence that we the majority are no longer required or welcome. The Good news is that we “The Useless Eaters” or at least the awake ones, no that we have already won our right to life. But as always we must choose our next chapter, CBDC? or ABDC? I Guarantee that we will very soon all be using one of them just no that one of them leads humanity to slavery and then extinction.
No one still solved the fact those plasma transform the walls into atomic Swiss cheese. And this is just research at best, maybe even just wasted money. “Disruptions” plasma instabilities and just the fact the plasma is very destructive won’t make it run for long before the entire thing has to be changed (well, the gigantic crazy expensive parts of the walls, I suppose). Anyway. I’m still for research even if it won’t produce energy, not this one. At least not more than you put into the system just to sustain fusion.
Iter head huncho: “ok, turn it on.” Iter 2ic: “it doesnt work” Iter head huncho: “did you plug it in?” Iter 2ic: “oh, hang on I’ll check” Iter head huncho: *face palm Iter 2ic: “yeah, wasn’t pluged in” Iter head huncho: “what’s that noise?” Iter 2ic “i dunno” Iter 3ic “you’re so dumb steve, seriously, decades in the planning and you forgot to plug it in?” Iter head huncho: “settle down rajesh, who forgot to flush the toilet earlier!?” Iter 3ic: “it wasn’t me!” Iter head huncho: “that noise is getting louder” Iter 3ic: “I think it’s the reconciliation tube warming up to vent the plasma” Iter head huncho: “ok, well my shift is over. good luck idiots” Iter 3ic: “see ya Sam, have a good week end buddy” Iter 2ic: “see you sam, I’m off too, bpught my dog a cat for her birthday and now I need to take the cat to the vet” Iter 3ic: “oh Steve” *shakes his head Iter head huncho: “screw it guys, lets just turn it on monday”
“that end up as dangerous nuclear waste” when talking about fission energy production, is pretty inaccurate… it ends up as the same elements, which are dangerous – Uranium and Plutonium, the additional by-products (less than 10%) aren’t harmful at all… It’s the Uranium and Plutonium that are harmful 😛 It’s possible (in the future) to remove the harmless byproducts and use the remaining Uranium or Plutonium. It’s also possible right now, to simply build a ‘more powerful’ fission reactor that can use the ‘waste’ from older generation reactors. Additionally, when talking about Uranium and Plutonium, you’re talking about something the size of a golf ball powering a reactor for 2-3 years – with the ‘waste’ being slightly smaller than that. But yes, fusion would be epic – just don’t hate on fission too much, the by-products from coal are 100,000x worse
B1M have lost control of themselveson this one: the E in ITER is for “experimental,” and what we are looking at here is simply the latest and largest in a succession of attempts to make fusion power work. Fusion is not difficult. Getting more power out than we put in is ver-ree difficult. We haven’t achieved it yet, and there is no reason to suppose that this large experiment will be different.
I don’t know man, will private energy companies just give up on their massive electric bills income? Energetic freedom will only come the day this nuclear fusion reactor will be miniaturized and inside each and single home powering it. Then.. we’ll be sure it’s going to truly make a change for the Better.
Could, maybe, possibly, if, hopefully, someday, somehow, what happens if it doesn’t work. Apart from renewable and revisiting nuclear fission with continuing reliance on hydrocarbons is there other ways science has of creating abundant power that is feasible or are we out of luck. Keep doing what we have been doing and hoping for the best. With growing populations and energy demands on an already shakey infrastructure I’m curious as to what if it doesn’t work? Anybody…
4 MILLION times the energy output of the same amount of fossil fuel… holy s%$t. I would love to see Big Oil collapse at the knees because of this. Literally oil rigs and oil wells abandoned everywhere. I’d volunteer to help dismantle ’em after, but we could leave some as abandoned wrecks to remind us.
Interesting article, well done. But for once I find myself on the Luddite Side of Construction: Way too expensive.by the Time this thing is even (if ever) switched on, it won’t even be connected to a Grid.Just a really, really expensive proof of Concept. They could not at least have designed it to be commercially functional (as they seem to presume it will reach viability) ? Just an overall Budget nightmare.
Video starts with a very bold statement: “This is a nuclear fusion reactor.” No. It’s not. It is hypothesized to be a nuclear fusion reactor. As far as it goes no one can state with certainty that it will ever be finished. That it will ever turn on. That it will produce anything other than extremely expensive parlor tricks. Sustained production of electricity from nuclear fusion is 19 years in the future and will be for the next 40 years.
Impressive article but i skipped back to hear where it should stand and yeah, it’s in france. I’m not suprise at all, france has some major nuclear energy problems, old reactors which can’t be run safety anymore and a newer reaction which is a mega project that the finish line get pushed further and further into the future. And then there come scientist in which dream about stuff, which denies for example the second law of thermodynamics, which defines that no system, can produce more energy than you put into it. So what it said at Timestamp 1:04 is complete nonsense. And what is said at the end of the article is also not true: The is no “code” to figure out. France also dreams about “infinite recycling” of atomic waste, which also doesn’t work because of the same principals and btw produces an atom waste which is so heated up, that you can’t store it with other atomic waste. No, you would need to reinforce existing facilities to store that. And another thing is that france tries both of that concept for a very long time already, with until now, not working, so it’s not even a news in the usual term. And ITER is an experiment at his current state, it need to be scaled up to use it in a commercial nuclear reactor. France is wasting countless mountains of money to develope something which don’t work, and will not work. The should better invest in renewable energy and better techniques to save the energy that comes from sun, wind and water. That is more reliable, much cleaner energy even that energy is not unlimited, of course not, but it should be expected that it will be longer here than us humans.
ITER is set to use a deuterium-tritium fusion reaction. At least half the world’s entire tritium supply will be needed for ITER. World tritium production, primarily in certain Canadian fission reactors, is going down as those reactors are decommissioned. This is a serious shortage for the future of deuterium-tritium fusion’s future.
If you think about, This is the most significant design and construction project of our lifetime. This technology, will be the single greatest achievement mankind has accomplished…period. It has the ability to save our planet, help billions of people enjoy a better lifestyle, reduce world poverty and hunger…the supply of endless ultra clean power has the potential to change human existence forever. So proud of this and everyone involved, they are truly working to push the human species into the next phase of our reality. (Now who is up for getting space travel going?…)
Hope the war in Russia and tensions between us and China wouldn’t hinder the progress of ITER as those mentioned nations have key roles in manufacturing components for the program for example Russia is tasked to produce the magnet and vacuum injection systems I wonder with the heavy sanctions could deliveries even be possible to reach ITER?
Since when is uranium hard to get hold of ? Australia shut down most of its mines and production because demand never materialised. China’s commissioning a coal fired generator every week. If something is too expensive no country will want it. Main reason why nuclear generators have had a slow growth if any.
Does it make sense building something so big the first time? Scientists agreed that everytime we find an answer to our question, we end up with more questions. So the bigger they are, the more devastation it create. I hope they (the scientists) know what they are doing 99% if not are 100% because they could be gambling humanity away.
The scale of the project is presented very well here, If it works it shows how coming together really can change the world. I carn’t help but feel there is a huge gap in our understanding of the sun and how it creates fusion, our understanding of the physics (quantum level etc) will hopefully improve once ITER fires up 🌞. Best wishes all.
Get cobalt magnets and a semicircle stainless steel bowl. Surround the magnets around the bowl on outside.. Then cut a small hole on bottom. Get a 100 watt only heat rod from amazon for 10 dollars. the 100 Wat rods go about 280 degrees normally (safe) however put the rod in the hole on the center of bowl. Then attach a 4 ft nickel rod that cost 5 bucks. a nickel rod can support 1500 degrees. after attaching nickel rod to 100 wat heat rod. plug it in. The cobalt magnets will force a curie effect. all of the sudden under 5 seconds the 100 watt rod is reaching over 1200 degrees because the magnetic field is going nuts with friction.. and also the field is being forced after the explosion back to center because the magnets are pulling it back like the sun. You now have over 1000 watts of energy at only 100 watts.. cost to make is about 50 dollars. Now put that over 1000 degree nickel rod in a water tank to boil water or make steam (free heat almost).. And screw the energy department. YOu might want to get a giger counter to check because it might not need uranium to have safe effect (as hint). When vibrating electrons and heating material the effects are the same as a small reactor. I built it by accident a couple years back looking to make heat on no energy. Here is you easy stop guide.. and screw the system.erter
Their asnt been one circular magnetic confinement device that as given out a net positive yet, why is this going to be any different? This project as a very godsilla type appeal about it and that includes the budget. Maybe just go back to the drawing board and try and come up with something feasible before you throw a counties deficit at it.
I strongly believe that the oil companies will run to embrace commercial fusion the moment a fusion reactor is able to generate enough power to produce a profit. It’s likely going to look like the Crypto or AI stock price pump we’ve seen in the past few years. I fear anti-nuke NIMBY crowd more than the oil companies when it comes to adopting fusion energy.
Fusion is great and all, even if ITER succeeds it will be nearly impossible to use fusion to supply global energy demand. In this article it is said that the hydrogen isotopes are abundant. Deuterium is, but tritium on the other hand isn’t. Tritium is a by product of nuclear fision and very tiny amounts are being produced. To supply the global energy demand we will first need to figure out how to efficiently produce great amounts of tritium at a low cost, which is a huge challenge on it’s own.
I feel this article gives a missleading veiw of where fusion technology is at. the Q value often show with ITER is 10 but that is just the heating elements and doesn’t include the much more power hungry magnets or other anciliary systems. also while dueterium is relativly simle to aquire Tritium is much rarer and expensive to the point that the cost per MW asuming a 100 percent efficiency is higher than a gas turbine
It’s hard because in the sun it is a combination of vast pressures (due to gravity) and temperature. We cannot simulate the pressure here on earth, so we can compensate by boosting the temperature to something like 7x the temperature of the sun’s core. That’s why it’s hard. You have to boost the temps to that and hold it, and do it efficiently enough so that the energy released by the fusion is more than what you put in to reach those conditions.
What was surprising to me, was that they were able to build something that could withstand temperatures “10 times hotter than the heart of the sun”. I honestly didn’t think that was possible. And that was for 5 seconds. The idea of building a structure that could take that temperature 24/7 is amazing.
I don’t think people have any idea of how much electricity we can genuinely create once this project is fully maximised. The Sun releases a massive amount of energy. Theoretically, nuclear fusion could release up to 4 times the amount of energy that nuclear fission releases. It’s also 100% safe. Nuclear meltdowns would be close to impossible. This means that making electricity could become 100% sustainable and much much cheaper. It also means that Porsche might actually succeed with their sustainable fuel project, as one of the main problems is the sheer amount of electricity needed to make it and the sustainability factor. Nuclear fusion is the future of electricity.
This is the highest amount of fusion power ever produced, which is an achievement for JET yes, but the fusion gain factor “Q” is what’s important. The Q effectively means the ratio of heat produced compared to the heat input. Anything less than 1 means you used more energy than you get out of it. We’ve only been able to consistently get above 1 through the use of fission bombs, which are obviously not practical for power generation. JET’s Q from this experiment is only .33, JET previously set a record of .67 decades ago, and the record right now is NIF’s .70.
I lived in Oxford 15 years ago. My upstairs neighbor was a nuclear physicist working on fusion. He had recently decided to focus his career on management instead of research. He told me that fusion power would not happen in his career. He said, possibly in 50 years, but that was still very optimistic.
This piece remarkably leaves out one of the most important pieces of information. As I understand it, the plasma was only sustained for 5 seconds because of the physical limitations of this reactor, not because it collapsed or failed in some regard. They can’t physically keep going by choice because it would seriously damage the reactor. The ITER reactor (much larger and currently being built in France) has already been designed with this in mind. So, if everything is correct, there is a good chance that when ITER starts up in 2025 it will prove functional within the first few months of testing.
Interesting but, understandibly, much essential information missing here. The device through which one of the scientists walked basically looks like a Tokamak being used since the 1960s but on a much larger scale. No surprises here. Most significant, if told correctly and interpreted correctly, is there is a small energy gain over a period of 5 seconds. This indeed is a significant improvement over the tens to hundred milliseconds achieved at the end of the 1970s. Compared with nuclear fission plants the advantages of fusion plants are so overwhelming that we really should invest in that road. But given, as said, that the tokamak route is being researched since the 1960s it will be a very long time for that route to deliver a lsignificant output fission factory.
I have worked on nuclear fusion for almost twenty years in the past at MIT, PPPL and JET, and was very passionate as those who have made the very kind comments on this post. I also participated in the DT campaigns at both the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) at PPPL and JET with the Collective Thomson Scattering diagnostic. Also congratulations to the JET Team for this accomplishment and all the hard work that went into it. However, over time, I have decided that DT fusion is not in the best interests for mankind’s future energy and environmental needs, exciting as it is and as I was. What changed my mind was a talk by the ITER engineering team at JET in the late 1990s. They described the plans for the enormous lithium blanket modules that would encompass the ITER vacuum vessel and breed tritium from the energetic neutron fusion products of the DT reaction. It occurred to me that there would be many tons of radioactive waste that would be produced in these lithium blanket modules that would have to be buried along with the vacuum vessel when ITER is retired, due to the energetic neutron radiation activating the structural material. Unfortunately, DT fusion is not as environmentally friendly as I had hoped it would be. It is a good project to train future scientists and engineers, but my hope is that a cleaner aneutronic nuclear fusion fuel would be the mainstream fusion effort in the future. The best fusion fuel that does not have energetic neutrons as a fusion product is proton boron^11, which has three energetic helium^4 particles as fusion products and which may be directly converted into electricity.
Artsimovich, is a prominent Soviet physicist, known as “the father of the Tokamak”, a special concept for a fusion reactor actually shown in the article.. Once Artsimovich was asked when the first thermonuclear reactor would start its work. He replied: “When mankind needs it, maybe a short time before that.” So, it seems that mankind is ready, or badly needs it, at least.
Hats off to these guys indeed but I believe we must still make use of Fission reactors, especially when everyone wants to electrify the hell out of our modern lives. The demands for energy will sky rocket and nothing comes close to the amount of it that nuclear energy can produce. The wind and solar power alone is just not gonna cut it.
A scientist’s perspective here – to you all saying “wow, amazing, I hope someone else keeps making progress on this.” Great that you feel inspired, but know that you too can help! Our species’ future requires all of us to help. But what if you are not a physicist, you ask? Sustainable energy is a inter-disciplinary field. Everything from marketers, to teachers, software developers, public policy, legal, business, accounting, mechanical engineering, robotics, chemistry, physics, propulsion, and even just raising awareness in social media – there are ways for anyone to contribute. For example, a lot of people fear nuclear energy because of myths or think fusion is a pipe dream, awareness and public branding is critical to raising capital needed. I work on fabrication of sensors for fuel cycle monitoring using AI – I am a PhD student in electrical engineering. I did not expect at first to be in this field or to ever have something to contribute…
It’s very good that multiple organizations are working on fusion. However, the title is misleading – this maybe a milestone for them, but is not a “huge breakthrough”. We’ve had shortly sustained fusion reactions before. The problem is that so far, those reactions require much more energy to be sustained than they produce. This is a much harder problem, than proving the reaction is possible in a controlled environment.
The results of this test is promising. Commercialization is many years and a couple of generations in the future, however. Material selection coupled with the mechanics and process really need several breakthroughs. I recommend these people start looking for unconventional, and as yet found solid materials, to achieve the breakthrough needed. Dont give up!
Even though they haven’t achieved a sustainable fusion reaction, 5 seconds is a long time compared to 20-billionths of a second just a decade ago. Also, these “donut reactors” create the pressure conditions needed for fusion using electromagnets and liquid helium set just above absolute zero. That makes these reactors contain the greatest temperature gradients in the observable universe, similar to the early years of the universe after the big bang, -280C – 150,000,000C in just one reactor. Unimaginable how anything could be built to sustain that.
So what was the energy output per energy input? That has been the major problem with fusion for decades. It takes more energy to initiate the fusion reaction and maintain magnetic containment of the plasma than you get out of the reaction. Many tokamaks have initiated fusion, but they always use more energy than they release; this is a problem for an energy source. I agree more research is needed and it is good they are working at it, but the story is not really a report of progress. What are they doing to solve the E in vs. E out problem?
Worked in a Theoretical Physics Institute in the ’80s and one of the Physicists was kind enough to explain Nuclear fusion was and how it compared it to nuclear fission. But at the end of our discussion he said that controlling nuclear fusion on earth is 30 years away, and always will be. So, from what I’m reading in this article (which by the way, does not state how much energy was consumed to produce that 5 seconds of nuclear fusion) I now understand what he meant.
I think it’s worth mentioning that although fusion is better than fission, at least environmentally speaking, fission is much more preferable than fossil fuels. In America, we get about 60% of our electricity from fossil fuel power plants, 20% renewable and 20% nuclear. We should prioritize replacing fossil fuel power plants with nuclear power plants immediately (whether it’s fusion or fission). The impact on the environment would be less and it would be much safer if done properly. After fossil fuel power plants have been replaced we’ll give Mother Earth more time to live until we can come up with better sources of energy such as fusion or renewable. I’d recommend you doing some research on it, great stuff.
Sorry about my pessimism but the only “major breakthrough” that can guarantee the use of fusion to power cities is the reversal of the energy deficit. We’ve been performing fusion in controlled labs for decades, nothing new. The only issue is that it requires far more energy to cause fusion than the energy fusion gives out. In other words, for it to be a power source, fusion needs to give more energy than it requires and we haven’t experimentally identified any break-even point thus far, even with highly experimental muon-catalyzed fusion reactions. Sadly, this is what the reporters and the scientists conveniently skip over. After all, they’re just looking to make the news to increase their funding.
As an old man, I’ll tell you that, approximately every three years (for the last fifty years), we’ve been spoon-fed another story about how fusion is making tremendous progress. Most of these news stories are written without mentioning the “tiny” fact that it still requires gargantuan amounts of external energy even to conduct the experiments, much less to reach a break-even point honestly calculated. Fusion is like String Theory: Funding for ongoing boondoggles must be protected by feeding nonsense to uninformed news media about how much progress is being made and about how this progress will change everything. String Theory has wasted the past fifty years of theoretical physics. Fusion will likely waste the next fifty. Print this out.
Yeah but if they’re still putting more energy into the reaction than they’re getting on the back end (to power the kettles) then we’re still not close to viable fusion power. That’s always been the main problem, it takes more energy to start and sustain the fusion reaction than what you get in useable energy out to power the electrical grid…
On 28th May, 2021, China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) just achieved a significant milestone in the country’s quest to unlock clean and limitless energy. Chinese media reported that EAST ran at 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds. For another 20 seconds, the ‘artificial sun’ also achieved a peak temperature of 160 million degrees Celsius. And BBC call this one with 150 million degree for 5 seconds as the most powerful fusion reactor, LOL.
I think the military in 4-5 countries have had it or something similar for at least 20 years. Some countries on Earth have had a joint moon base/colony on the moon for years. I think there’s a good chance they also have one on Mars. Fusion power is probably what powers them and the transport ships. I don’t think they have FTL ships yet but fusion ones that can go hundreds of thousands of miles per hour they do. These are not ET reverse engineered but 100% human tech. They produce a gravity/antigravity field which also serves as a shield and negates inertia. The power companies on Earth will control it just like oil and they will have all kinds of excuses as to why they will be charging a bazillion dollars a year to use it, when in fact it will only cost pennies a day to produce it. The only reason the countries are leaking the secrets on how to make it is there are other oil free technologies on the horizon such as 50% efficient solar panels and battery technology 10 times better than todays.
“Fusion energy is carbon free” I’ve been following the construction of the ITER site, reactor and installations over their website and it is an incredibly huge and complex project. All of the materials, equipment, structures… in place there are not carbon free. As renewable energies, like solar or wind, building the infrastructure to produce clean power needs materials and energy that have a huge carbon footprint.
To everyone making fun of her statement. I’m a physics student at a renowned university. She couldn’t have possibly described the reasons for why it takes as long as it does in a few seconds. Her answer was pretty much the best she could do. It starts with the biggest challenge of producing more energy than it takes to fuse the atoms together. You have to heat the hydrogen up to multiple thousand degrees Celsius that the elections become free from the protons and neutrons that form the core to be able to fuse them together and that takes a hell of a lot of energy in the first place. Furthermore the plasma needs to stay suspended in a vacuum, not touching any wall or the wall will melt and minimizing the heat/energy exchange (entropy) between the plasma and the inner walls. This also takes a lot of energy. This was just one reason why it is so damn hard but there are many more.
The fact that this was able to have a net power output, is an amazing step forward. If I remember correctly, the best that has been done before is break-even in its power output. This is wonderful news to hear. especially right now, but there is still a long road ahead, before this is economically viable. Edit: I did want to acknowledge that I misunderstood the article, apparently there was a net-power loss, but it was less than previous attempts, the comments below go into further detail.
I think we can say in the fusion world the ruling scale is a hundred thousand breakthroughs is equivalent to one tangible result. Seems to be the case in a lot of things nowadays like electric car batteries trying to wade through all the you tube title hyperbole with a mass of breakthroughs wherever we look but little difference leaking down in to our daily lives. In fact we could be going in to the coldest and hungriest winters of our lives despite all this overwhelming mass of breakthroughs every moment of the day.
found a probelm for the uk at least in the current economic state did the maths so the uk uses 27.5 terrawatts (tw) per year, its estimated on the high end that the power station can make 500 megawatts (mw), there is 1 million mw in a tw so we need 2000 power stations to make 1 tw of power, a power station might cost between £4 – £6 billion to make and build the plant, so £6 billion x 2000 = 12,000,000,000,000/£12 trillion to make enough for 1 tw of power in 2022 the usa has 4.9 trillion$ i have nothing against this project but currently it is too bigg of an investment at the current moment tbh i just though about it and fell down a rabbit hole, i may be wrong (most likely lol)
Energy is the number one resource that puts humanity ahead. First a simple fire, then coal and locomotives and then whole industrialization. Everything humans need requires energy to produce. And every time we got a new way to produce energy, humanity stepped forwards. With nuclear fusion and unlimited energy, we could build so many things that are currently not energy efficient enough. And energy efficiency is only a problem, when you have limited energy. Notice how everything including food gets more expensive when energy is expensive? Now imagine super cheap energy. Wealth will shoot up like a rocket. And this will open pathway to totally new concepts unheard of that require huge amount of energy. I hope to see that day and the 20 years after.
I bet you didnt know that the advancement curve for fusion has been greater than the advances made in computing power 🙂 You might also want to check out the companies General Fusion, Helion Energy and TAE Technologies – They have decades of experience with several prototype fusion reactors and are so so close – Wont be long now 🙂
Hello I Am Dr. McDaniel And 16 Years Ago I Created The Formula 2H2 → 4H+ + 4e- For Oxygen Hydrogen Fusion. Using The Equation q = m·ΔHf I Found A 16 Tech Tree For Fusion From 1 Egg To Salt 16 And Selected The 16th Salt Fusion. Then 1 Day Ago I Auto Corrected To The Formula 2H2(g) + O2(g) → 2 NACL(s) The Reaction Between Hydrogen Gas And Oxygen Gas To Form Sodium Chloride. The Molten Salt Reactor Can Be Made From The Oxygen Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle And Reverse Engineered To Produce Salt On An Industrial Scale.
More fusion follies from the usual laboratories. Before the romance with confined nuclear fusion, get acquainted with these four books: “The Fairy Tale of Nuclear Fusion” by Reinders (Springer), “A Piece of the Sun” by Clery (Ducksworth Overlook), “Fusion Follies: Carbon-Free Energy and Seawater Sorcery” by Miklosy (Amazon), “Lost in Math” by Hossenfelder (Basic Books). When JET can show a net positive energy produced from magnetic confined fusion, post it here.