South Korea succeeds in “lighting” its artificial sun to 100 million degrees

Several countries have been trying for years to obtain an energy source as unlimited and “clean” as that of the Sun, and to reproduce it in a sustainable way and on a large scale, a race in which South Korean scientists have claimed to have succeeded. to maintain a “stable Sun for 20 seconds.” artificial “to over 100 million degrees inside a nuclear fusion device, setting a world record by beating its British 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 achieve the world record, in 2019 the Joint European Torus, a fusion reactor located in the United Kingdom, achieved 10 seconds under the same conditions and KSTAR itself had not gone over eight. seconds in 2019, Engadget recalled.

In its 2018 experiment, KSTAR for the first time reached the plasma ion temperature of 100 million degrees (retention time: about 1.5 seconds), according to a dispatch from the DPA news agency.

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

The record

So far, there have been other fusion devices that have briefly manipulated plasma at temperatures of 100 million degrees or more, but none have crossed the keep-alive barrier for more than 10 seconds, This is the limit of operation of the normal driving device, and it was difficult to maintain a stable plasma state in the fusion device at such high temperatures for a long time.

In its 2020 experiment, KSTAR improved the performance of Internal Transport Barrier Mode (ITB), one of the next-generation plasma modes of operation developed last year, and successfully maintained the state of the plasma for a long time. , exceeding the existing limits of ultra-high temperature plasma operation.

KSTAR started using the device last August and aims to achieve 300-second continuous operation with an ion temperature above 100 million degrees by 2025. (Telam)