A team of researchers at the Joint European Torus facility near Oxford produced 59 megajoules of sustained energy. Scientists in the United Kingdom have announced that they have reached a new milestone in generating nuclear fusion energy, or imitating how energy is produced in the Sun.
Nuclear fusion energy is one of humanity's long-standing quests because it promises to be low carbon, safer than current nuclear energy production methods, and with an effectiveness that can technically exceed 100 percent. The UK Atomic Energy Authority said in a statement on Monday that a team at the Joint European Torus (JET) facility near Oxford in central England produced 59 megajoules of sustained energy during an experiment in December, more than trebling a 1997 record. A kilogram of fusion fuel includes roughly ten million times the energy of a kilogram of coal, oil, or gas.
The energy was generated by a tokamak, a doughnut-shaped machine, and the JET site is the world's largest operational one of its kind. The hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium are reheated 10 times warmer than the core of the sun to produce plasma. This is held in place by superconductor electromagnets as it spins around, fuses, and emits enormous amounts of energy as heat.
