Korean scientists have created an ‘artificial sun’ at the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) reactor. The research facility has reached an important milestone with its tokamak reactor: holding a temperature above 100 million degrees Celsius for 30 seconds.
Key highlights
- KSTAR uses magnetic fields to generate and stabilize ultra-hot plasma, with the ultimate aim of making nuclear fusion power a reality.
- This is not the first time that an artificial sun has been created in laboratories. Chinese scientists have been working on developing smaller versions of the nuclear fusion reactor since 2006.
- In December 2021, the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) fusion energy reactor in China created an artificial sun, reaching temperatures of 70 million degrees Celsius for 1,056 seconds, which is five times hotter than the sun.
- Nuclear fusion merges atomic nuclei to create massive amounts of energy, which is the opposite of the fission process used in atomic weapons and nuclear power plants, which splits them into fragments.
- Unlike fission, fusion emits no greenhouse gases and carries less risk of accidents or the theft of atomic material.
- Nuclear Fusion reactions power the Sun and other stars. In a fusion reaction, two light nuclei merge to form a single heavier nucleus. The process releases energy because the total mass of the resulting single nucleus is less than the mass of the two original nuclei.
- The leftover mass becomes energy.
- Researchers working on fusion energy applications are especially interested in the deuterium-tritium (DT) fusion reaction.
- DT fusion produces a neutron and a helium nucleus. In the process, it also releases much more energy than most fusion reactions.
- In a potential future fusion power plant such as a tokamak or stellarator, neutrons from DT reactions would generate power for our use.
- The tokamak, a doughnut-shaped device with a ring of hot gas known as plasma trapped by powerful magnets, is one of the top contenders for a stable nuclear reactor.
- The term “plasma” refers to stuff that has had its electrons removed from its atoms, creating a charged gas.
