Selparis

Could it be that, in my lifetime, we will at least develop viable fusion power? I mean, the various space agencies are killing my hope that we’ll send someone to Mars in the next fifty years, but maybe we’re all desperate enough for energy that we can pull this colossal trick off, and catapult civilization to the next stage?

University of Tennessee researchers have successfully tested the technology that keeps the central solenoid of a tokamak fusion reactor stable. The actual solenoid for the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) in France can now be built by General Atomics in San Diego. If successful, ITER will start running deuterium-tritium reactions in 2026. The expectation is that it will be able to output ten times more power than it inputs. Considering fusion reactors up till now have consumed more than they produce, this is a big leap.

Just to orient ourselves, this is a tokamak-type reactor from the outside:

NSTX (Credit: Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory)

And the internal torus surrounding the solenoid:

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