achievement Archives

Europe and Japan advance unstoppable towards nuclear fusion. His last achievement reminds us why we don’t have it yet

August 24, 2025 by usatoday24

The experimental reactor of nuclear fusion JT-60SA resides in Naka, a small city not very far from Tokyo (Japan). Its construction began in January 2013, but did not do it from scratch; He did it taking as a starting point the JT-60 reactor, his precursor, a machine that came into operation in 1985 and that for more than three decades has reached very important milestones in the field of merger energy. The JT-60SA assembly ended at the beginning of 2020, and since the end of 2023 it is ready to start The first tests with plasma. This machine is a device Tokamak that like jet and The future iter It resorts to the magnetic confinement of the ionized plasma that contains the deuterium and tritium nuclei to trigger nuclear fusion reactions. Whatever this machine is titanic. Colossal. In fact, it has a height of 15.4 meters and a diameter of 13.7 meters. However, the most shocking are the “specifications” that allow us to train an idea about their performance. And it is able to confine a plasma with a volume of 130 m³, as well as to generate a 2,25 teslas toroidal magnetic field and hold a current inside the plasma of 5.5 mA (5.5 million amps). These figures are shocking, and presumably when Iter is ready to start the first tests with plasma their figures will be even more impressive. Of course, during the next months already measure that the reactor JT60-SA deliver its first results we will develop with great detail. JT-60SA already has one of the most advanced diagnostic systems that exist On April 22, the latest components needed by Japanese and European engineers who work in the reactor to assemble the Thomson dispersion diagnostic system arrived at the JT-60SA facilities. Every time the researchers operating this very complex machine carry out an experiment with it need to know with the maximum possible precision the temperature and density of the plasma electrons. The components of the Thomson Dispersion Measurement Team have been designed and manufactured in Italy, Romania and Japan The main problem they face is that it is not possible to obtain this data taking direct measures. In order for the merger of the deuterium and tritium nuclei to take place, it is necessary that the plasma that contains them a temperature of At least 150 million degrees Celsiusand any sensor that contacts him at this temperature will not survive. This is the reason why the engineers of the JT-60SA reactor have been forced to set up an extraordinarily sophisticated diagnostic system. The components of the Thomson dispersion measurement team have been designed and manufactured in Italy, Romania and Japan. Broadly speaking, this ingenuity manages to measure the temperature and density of plasma electrons analyzing the light that emits with a high -power laser beam dispersed, precisely, by the plasma electrons themselves. Somehow the interaction between the laser and plasma is what allows engineers indirectly calculating temperature and density. The JT-60SA reactor will have two diagnostic systems of Thomson’s dispersion. The nucleus has been developed in Japan, and the edge of the plasma has been devised in Europe. Both are currently being installed, and, if everything goes well, this machine will have in a few months one of the diagnostic and measurement equipment more advanced that exist. The nuclear fusion no longer raises any challenge from the point of view of fundamental physics. If we still have no commercial fusion energy reactors, it is due to the fact that this technology still requires solving several challenges in the field of engineering. The tuning of this diagnostic system was one of them. Image | QST More information | Eurofusion In Xataka | The Jet reactor has successfully completed its final tests with deuterium and tritium. It is a crucial milestone for nuclear fusion

The great digital achievement of Spain has been to raise the best fiber network in Europe

May 27, 2025 by usatoday24

This Tuesday Spain definitely closes a 140 -year -old chapter. Telefónica has announced the shutdown of its last 661 copper centralsforever burying the technology that vertebó the communications of the twentieth century. But real history is not the funeral of copper, but Spain has become a European leader in connectivity. Why is it important. While other European countries continue to debate when to migrate from copper, Spain has already completed that transition. Telefónica is the first great operator of the continent to completely close its copper network. The rest of Europe looks at us from behind. In figures. The numbers deny the myth of Spanish technological backwardness. Spain is The third OECD country with greater fiber optic penetration. The fiber lines represent 89.3% of the total fixed broadband. The network reaches 80 million accesses installed in a country of 49 million inhabitants. The trick: homes are included but also local, in addition to many duplicates among operators. Only South Korea and Japan overcome us in some indicators. France, Germany or the United Kingdom are behind FTTH coverage. In FTTB, Spain leads Europe After years only behind Iceland. The panoramic. Since 2014, Spain has dismantled 8,532 copper centrals in a huge logistics operation. Has migrated 99.99% of customers Without leaving them without service. It has recycled 65,000 tons of cable and saved 1,000 gigawatt energy, according to company sources cited by Five days. All while building an infrastructure that covers 94% of the population. Including rural areas that place us far ahead of other European countries in rural coverage. Between the lines. The Spanish transformation has gone unnoticed because it coincided with years of economic crisis and with the perennial complex of national technological inferiority. It is true that we are light years from the United States or China in terms of large technological ones, but we have built the best telecommunications infrastructure in Europe. The optical fiber is 90% more energy efficient than copper and multiplies speeds. A fiber plant serves to the same number of accesses as four copper centrals occupying only 15% of the space. The money trail. Telefónica has converted the transition into business. The sale and recycling of the retired copper has been an extra income of about 1,000 million euros, taking advantage of the revaluation of the metal. Yes, but. Copper does not disappear completely from the Spanish map. More than two million customers are still connected by coaxial cable using HFC technology (fiber-coaxial hybrid). They are mainly of operators such as Vodafone or Euskaltel. It is not the same copper as the ADSL that has just died, but technically it is still copper that carries the signal to the home. The difference: this coaxial coexists with the fiber in a hybrid network that offers speeds far superior to the old telephone copper pair. Deepen. The Spanish fiber revolution is no accident. It started when the Spanish regulator liberalized the market and forced Telefónica to share its infrastructure. The competition between operators accelerated the deployment. Now that infrastructure will be the basis for the next generations of mobile networks, the Internet of things and future technologies to develop. Spain has built a digital infrastructure prepared for the future. In Xataka | 100 years after his birth, Telefónica faces the greatest existential dilemma in its history: what wants to be older Outstanding image | Lightsaber Collection in Unspash

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