(GIST OF SCIENCE REPORTER) NUCLEAR FUSION: THE FUTURE OF SUSTAINABLE ENERGY AND ITS CHALLENGES

(MARCH-2025)

NUCLEAR FUSION: THE FUTURE OF SUSTAINABLE ENERGY AND ITS CHALLENGES

Recently, China’s artificial sun, known as the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), burned for over 1000 seconds, creating a new record for the scientists working on the project.

Key Details

For 1066 seconds, the artificial sun reached a temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius and maintained a steady-state high-confinement plasma operation, breaking the previous record.
Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Plasma Physics (ASIPP) set the aforementioned record by beating the previous record of 403 seconds set by the same project.
Since its inception in 2006, EAST has served as a free testing ground for fusion-related research and experimentation by both Chinese and foreign scientists.

Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST)

The tokamak is an experimental machine designed to harness the energy of fusion.
The Russian abbreviation for “toroidal chamber with magnetic coils” is where the word “tokamak” originates.
A tokamak’s doughnut-shaped vacuum chamber is its central component. Inside, gaseous hydrogen fuel transforms into a plasma—a hot, electrically charged gas—due to intense heat and pressure.
Plasmas create the conditions for light elements to fuse and produce energy in a star, just like in a fusion device.
To restrict the heated plasma away from the vessel walls, scientists employ the enormous magnetic coils positioned around the vessel to shape and control the charged particles of the plasma.
The plasma is heated to fusion temperatures (between 150 and 300 million °C) with the use of auxiliary heating techniques.
When particles are “energised” to this extent, they can fuse and release enormous amounts of energy by overcoming their inherent electromagnetic repulsion.

Nuclear fusion

The process of nuclear fusion releases enormous quantities of energy as two light atomic nuclei unite to form a single, heavier one.
Fusion reactions occur in plasma, a hot, charged gas composed of free-moving electrons and positive ions that has special characteristics not seen in solids, liquids, or gases.
This reaction is what drives the sun and all other stars.
In our sun, nuclei must meet at incredibly high temperatures—roughly 10 million degrees Celsius—in order to fuse.
They have enough energy from the high temperature to overcome their electrical repulsion with one another.
The nuclei can fuse once they are very close to one another because the nuclear force between them will be stronger than the electrical repulsion.

Conclusion:

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