Joint project with EU involves more than 500 scientists and engineers and more than 70 companies
The world’s biggest operational experimental nuclear fusion reactor – a technology in its infancy but billed by some as the answer to humanity’s future energy needs – has been inaugurated in Naka, Japan.
Fusion differs from fission, the technique used in nuclear power plants, by fusing two atomic nuclei instead of splitting one.
The goal of the JT-60SA reactor is to investigate the feasibility of fusion as a safe, large-scale and carbon-free source of net energy – with more energy generated than is put into producing it.
The six-storey-high machine, in a hangar in Naka, north of Tokyo, comprises a doughnut-shaped “tokamak” vessel set to contain swirling plasma heated up to 200mC (360mF).
It is a joint project between the European Union and Japan, and is the forerunner for its big brother in France, the under-construction International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).
LNL demonstrated ignition and EAST demonstrated minute-scale high confinement. This is the most promising period in fusion research in a long time.
Interestingly, these innovations continue to be driven by government-funded research institutions rather than private industry.
That’s not surprising at all. The investment required with the high possibility of failure makes this a non starter for private business which are inherently risk adverse.
Private businesses engage in extremely risky enterprises everyday, it’s why things like explicit liability exist. The issue with something like this is their cost benefit analysis tells them that succeeding would create diminishing rates of return. Solving fusion reaction for the purposes of generating electricity eliminates a form of scarcity. Scarcity or manufactured scarcity is the only thing that enables corporations to continually increase profits.
That’s a good point. I should have mentioned ROI in my post
Interestingly, or in this case, obviously.