In France, the world’s largest fusion reactor, ITER, has completed installing its final magnet coil. This impressive feat was achieved with a budget of $27 billion, but despite its size and power, the reactor is not expected to be operational for another 15 years. Originally projected to be fully operational by 2020, the ITER project team now anticipates that it won’t be running until at least 2039.
This delay means that fusion energy may not be a timely solution to the climate crisis. ITER is a collaboration between 35 countries, including the European Union, the UK, China, India, and the US. The reactor houses the world’s most powerful magnet, which will produce a magnetic field 280,000 times stronger than Earth’s protective magnetic field. The reactor design is costly and faced delays and increased costs for manufacturing and unforeseen expenses.
Nuclear fusion aims to mimic the process that occurs at the cores of stars, where hydrogen atoms fuse to create helium and generate energy without emitting greenhouse gases or producing long-lived radioactive waste. However, achieving fusion in a controlled environment is challenging. The most common fusion reactor design is the tokamak which uses magnetic fields to contain superheated plasma and create conditions necessary for fusion reactions to occur.
Despite decades of research and billions of dollars invested in this project, no fusion reactor has successfully produced more energy than it consumes. One of the main challenges is maintaining high temperatures required for sustained fusion reactions while keeping plasma stable long enough for it to take place. Even with this challenge still looming ahead of us progress has been made towards harnessing nuclear fusion as an alternative source of energy production.
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