South Korea ‘lit’ its artificial sun and set new world record

The nuclear fusion device used by South Korea / KFE

For years, several countries have tried to obtain an energy source as unlimited and “clean” as that of the Sun, and to reproduce it in a sustainable way on a large scale, a race in which South Korea has just taken the lead. . Scientists in this country have announced that they have managed to keep an “artificial sun” stable for 20 seconds, over 100 million degrees inside a nuclear fusion device, setting a world record by beating its predecessor by ten seconds.

On November 24, the KSTAR Research Center, belonging to the Korea Fusion Energy Institute (KEF), announced that, in a joint investigation with Seoul National University (SNU) and Columbia University in the United States, it continuous operation of the plasma for 20 seconds, with an ionic temperature above 100 million degrees, which is one of the essential conditions of nuclear fusion in the KSTAR 2020 plasma campaign.

Experts consider it a feat to extend the operating life of the plasma and to achieve the world record.

The previous mark was reached last year by the Joint European Torus, a fusion reactor located in the United Kingdom, which managed to maintain operation for 10 seconds, two seconds which have been achieved so far by KSTAR himself.

In its 2018 experiment, KSTAR first achieved the plasma ion temperature of 100 million degrees, with a retention time of approximately 1.5 seconds.

A SOLAR FUSION RECREATOR

To recreate the fusion reactions that occur on the Sun on Earth, the isotopes of hydrogen must be placed inside a fusion device like the one in KSTAR to create a plasma state where ions and electrons meet. separate. But in addition, the ions must be heated and stored at high temperatures.

In order to recreate this phenomenon, the Korea Institute of Energy and Fusion has a factory in Daejeon city equipped with a toroidal chamber with magnetic coils.

It is an experimental device created in the 1950s in the Soviet Union that consists of a circular vacuum chamber where, by heat and pressure, the hydrogen nuclei merge to form helium and produce l ‘energy.

Instead of using fossil fuels or nuclear fission (the splitting of the atom’s nucleus) to generate energy, this South Korean factory uses nuclear fusion (the junction of the nuclei of atoms).

Nuclear fusion is possible when the nuclei of two elements with low proton numbers come together to form the nucleus of a heavier element, which can release more energy.

But in a laboratory, practical problems arise that so far have not been solved: for example, how to conserve the energy generated in the chamber where the gas is transformed into plasma, which is the fourth state of matter , or how to balance the temperature. plasma, which is irregular.

As reported by specialist media, the South Korean research center has improved the performance of the internal transport barrier mode, one of the next generation modes for plasma operation, which was developed last year, and managed to maintain the state of the plasma for a long time, exceeding the limits that existed for the operation of the plasma at ultra high temperature ”, the authorities of KFE said in a statement.