British scientists announce record for energy production by nuclear fusion

Scientists in the United Kingdom announced on Wednesday that they had produced a record amount of energy through nuclear fusion, calling it a further “step” towards industrial production of this form of energy that its supporters defend as clean and cheap.

An alternative to nuclear fission used in today’s power plants, nuclear fusion aims to replicate what happens in the heart of the sun and is considered by its supporters to be the energy of the future, above all because it produces little waste – and much less radioactivity than in a conventional plant – and no greenhouse gas.

A team of scientists from the Joint European Torus (JET), the world’s largest fusion reactor, located near Oxford, managed to generate 59 megajoules of energy through this process in December, which is more than double the previous record, set in 1997 , according to the British Atomic Energy Authority.

These results “are the clearest demonstration on a global scale of the potential of fusion to provide sustainable energy,” the agency said in a statement.

In equal amounts, nuclear fusion can produce four million times more energy than coal, oil or gas.

The results announced on Wednesday demonstrate the possibility of creating fusion energy for five seconds, which is still not enough to make the process viable.

But “if you can keep the fusion going for five seconds, you can do it for five minutes, and then for five hours” with more powerful future machines, argued Tony Donne of the EUROfusion consortium.

International cooperation on fusion is extensive because, unlike fission, it cannot be used as a weapon.

In the south of France, another fusion reactor is being built, more advanced than the JET, baptized Iter, in which China, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States participate.

Its general director, Bernard Bigot, celebrated the British results on Wednesday considering that they are close to “industrial scale” production.

The Iter project is however criticized by environmentalists who, like Greenpeace, consider it a “scientific mirage” and “a bottomless financial hole”. (I)