fusion

Europe and Japan step on the accelerator of nuclear fusion and place the ball in the court of a strategic country: Spain

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Europe and Japan walk hand in hand towards nuclear fusion commercial. They have been working together for several years in the JT-60SA experimental reactorthe largest magnetic confinement fusion energy machine that currently exists. However, this is not the only project in which they collaborate. They are also fine-tuning the LIPAc linear particle accelerator (Linear IFMIF Prototype Accelerator or IFMIF Prototype Linear Accelerator). This machine resides in Rokkasho (Japan). After having undergone a very ambitious update, it is ready to begin the final phase that will conclude with its commissioning in 2027. Its purpose is to test the limits of particle beam physics to pave the way for future fusion reactors. Europe and Japan began developing this 36-meter-long particle accelerator in 2007 with the aim of validating the design of an IFMIF-type machine (International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility) capable of acting as a neutron source. To achieve this, this device had to recreate the intense irradiation conditions that occur inside a fusion reactor. One of Europe’s most important contributions is a huge steel cryostat with magnetic shielding and a thermal shield that houses a powerful superconducting radio frequency system. This component serves to accelerate protons and deuterium nuclei until they reach a maximum energy of 9 MeV (megaelectronvolts), which will place them close to the high-energy neutrons that future commercial fusion reactors will produce. LIPAc is the precursor of IFMIF-DONES, which is already being built in Spain The knowledge that scientists hope to gain from LIPAc will be used in the development of IFMIF-DONES (International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility DEMO-Oriented NEutron Source), that is already being built in Escúzar, a town in the province of Granada. The heart of this facility is a linear particle accelerator that will cost approximately 450 million euros, although the Government of Andalusia will provide half of this money. However, this is the cost of the accelerator; The entire IFMIF-DONES project will cost around 700 million euros. Spain will contribute half of this capital. IFMIF-DONES is one of the three fundamental pillars of the nuclear fusion edifice in whose construction the European Union is involved. The other two are ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) and DEMO. The experimental nuclear fusion reactor that is currently being built in the French town of Cadarache aims to demonstrate that fusion at the scale that man can handle worksand also that it is profitable from an energy point of view. However, ITER does not aim to produce electricity. That will be the task of DEMO (DEMOnstration Power Plant), a facility that will take the technological advances that have been proven to work correctly at ITER and take them one step further to establish itself as the true precursor of commercial nuclear fusion reactors. However, without IFMIF-DONES there will be no DEMO, so right now Granada is the center of attention. The IFMIF-DONES linear accelerator will produce high-energy neutrons with the intensity and irradiation volume necessary to test candidate materials To fully understand the role of the IFMIF-DONES project, it is necessary to briefly review the fundamentals of nuclear fusion. One of the greatest challenges faced by technicians involved in the development of nuclear fusion reactors using magnetic confinement, such as ITER, is to recreate the conditions necessary for them to operate inside the vacuum chamber of these sophisticated machines. deuterium and tritium nuclei fuse. However, this is by no means all. When this reaction takes place, the fusion of a deuterium nucleus and another tritium nucleus triggers the production of a helium nucleus and a neutron that is ejected with an energy of about 14 MeV. The problem is that the neutron lacks a net electrical charge, so it cannot be confined inside the magnetic field which, however, does manage to retain the deuterium and tritium nuclei, which have a positive electrical charge. This is the reason why when it originates as a result of the nuclear fusion reaction, this neutron is ejected towards the walls of the vacuum chamber with enormous energy. This particle is very important because in practice it will be closely linked to the production of electrical energy in nuclear fusion reactors, but, at the same time, it represents a very aggressive form of radiation that can significantly degrade the materials used in the reactor. The components that will be most affected by the direct impact of high-energy neutrons and the most intense heat flow are the internal wall of the vacuum chamber and the blanket. The components that will be most affected by the direct impact of high-energy neutrons and the most intense heat flow are the inner wall of the vacuum chamber and the blanketwhich is a mantle that covers it and whose purpose is to regenerate the tritium that must be used as fuel in the nuclear fusion reaction. This is why it is crucial to develop new materials that are able to withstand the neutron flux and therefore ensure that the reactor will have a long operational life. This is, neither more nor less, the purpose of IFMIF-DONES. And to carry it out it is necessary to set up facilities designed to allow the technicians involved in the project evaluate the properties of candidate materials to intervene not only in DEMO, but also in future commercial nuclear fusion reactors. The mission of this project invites us to intuit what the heart of IFMIF-DONES is: a source capable of producing high-energy neutrons with the intensity and volume of irradiation necessary to test the candidate materials. And this neutron source will be nothing more than a linear particle accelerator that will help IFMIF-DONES scientists to test, validate and qualify the materials that in the medium term should reach future electric energy production plants through fusion. Image | Fusion for Energy More information | Fusion for Energy In Xataka | ITER has faced one of the great challenges of nuclear fusion: preventing plasma at 150 million ºC from destroying the reactor

Meta and Google talk about nuclear fusion for the future; The short-term reality is that they are pulling natural gas

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Silicon Valley has an undeniable gift for selling the future. If one listens to the great technological leaders, Artificial Intelligence will soon be powered by energy sources worthy of a science fiction novel. Goal just signed an agreement to obtain solar energy directly from satellites in space, while figures such as Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, They assure that nuclear fusion It is the great “silver bullet” that will save the sector. However, it is enough to look down from the stars to the earth to find a much smokier reality. To feed the insatiable “energy monster” that AI has unleashed, big technology companies are turning to the technology of the past. As explained from Axiosthe race to dominate artificial intelligence is accelerating at such a dizzying pace that the industry’s ambitious climate goals are taking a discreet backseat. Today, the world’s most sophisticated cloud is being built on a foundation of fossil fuels. The numbers speak for themselves. Far from nuclear fusion laboratories, the actual infrastructure being built in the United States tells a story based on natural gas. Meta’s case is perhaps the most graphic, as detailed in Bloomberg, US utility Entergy Corp. has had to increase its capital spending plan by almost a third, reaching $57 billion, to build 10 new natural gas plants dedicated exclusively to powering the new data campus Hyperion of Meta in Louisiana. This gigantic complex will require more than 7 gigawatts of power, the equivalent of the output of seven large nuclear reactors. Google, the historic champion of clean energy, is not far behind either. An investigation by the market intelligence firm Cleanview has brought to light Google’s partnership with the company Crusoe Energy to develop a huge data center in Texas named “good night“. The project includes a 933-megawatt gas plant built outside the traditional electrical grid. The end of the green utopia? The environmental impact of this installation is not minor, how to explain Guardianthe plant will emit up to 4.5 million tons of carbon dioxide per year. To put it in perspective, this exceeds the annual emissions of the entire city of San Francisco or is equivalent to putting 970,000 additional gasoline cars on the roads. Given this, Google’s official position is cautious. Chrissy Moy, company spokesperson, does not deny the project before the mediaalthough it clarifies that, although they are linked to the campus, they still “do not have a contract in force” to acquire energy from said gas plant. How have they developed in oil pricethe origin of this sudden gas rush is that data centers are putting local power grids under unprecedented pressure, causing consumers to bear the cost of this increased energy competition. To overcome the slow expansions of the public network and the endless waiting lists for permits, Wired points out that data center developers They are choosing to generate their own energy “behind the meter” (off-grid). And in that fast and private strategy, gas is king. Their green mask falls off. This is a serious blow to Silicon Valley’s green image. As you remember GuardianGoogle was once a pioneer in promising net zero emissions by 2030. However, the company itself has had to admit that its carbon emissions have increased by 48% in the last five years due to data centers. Now, those environmental objectives have been internally downgraded to the category of climate moonshots (speculative projects very difficult to achieve). The underlying problem is purely physical. As he reflects Impakterenergy—not chip shortages—is emerging as the real bottleneck for AI. Traditional renewable sources are intermittent, and large language models require devouring electricity 24 hours a day. A systemic problem that is already raising blisters in Washington. The return to natural gas is not an isolated anecdote of a couple of companies. There are currently about 100 gigawatts of gas-fired power in development in the United States destined for data centers alone. Microsoft just signed a deal with oil giant Chevron in Texas, and permits for OpenAI’s Project Jupiter in New Mexico suggest it could emit up to 14 million tons of greenhouse gases annually (triple that of Google’s project). Faced with this fossil avalanche, Democratic senators such as Whitehouse, Van Hollen and Heinrich have sent letters demanding formal explanations from leaders of Meta and OpenAI for putting the country’s climate commitments at risk. The industry defends itself by arguing that it is a necessary evil. Cully Cavness, president of Crusoe, explained that natural gas it is a critical “bridge” and the only power source available today capable of scaling at the pace AI demands. Next-generation clean alternatives will take decades. Meta’s promising agreement to receive solar energy from space will not have a pilot satellite until 2028and its commercial viability is not expected, at best, until the 2030s or 2040s. The same happens with commercial fusion reactors: they will not dump a single watt into the grid well into the next decade. The great paradox of AI. Business magazines celebrate the financial success of this revolution. In their profiles of the most influential companies, TIME relates how Google, under Sundar Pichai, has reached a $4 trillion market value driven by its advances in AI, while Mark Zuckerberg celebrates record ad revenue on Meta by promising systems that will soon “understand the unique personal goals” of each user. Silicon Valley promises that this same Artificial Intelligence will one day help us solve humanity’s great challenges, including climate change itself. But the current paradox is inescapable: in the real world of 2026, to train the most brilliant and avant-garde artificial mind ever created, human beings still inevitably need to set natural gas on fire. Image | Photo by Tasos Mansour on Unsplash Xataka | Solving the mystery of the red balls on high-voltage cables: a simple way to save lives

The US is using an exascale power supercomputer to solve the biggest challenge of nuclear fusion

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The Frontier supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) linked to the US Department of Energy is one of the most powerful on the planet. In fact, it is currently the second most capable exascale supercomputer after El Capitan according to TOP500 ranking. These machines are very valuable tools that are already being used by researchers to try to solve some of the most complex scientific problems that humanity faces. And one of them is the behavior of plasma when it is under the influence of a magnetic field. A group of ORNL researchers is using two of the most powerful tools currently available to humans, the Frontier supercomputer and the artificial intelligence (AI), to understand with the greatest possible precision the chaotic behavior of the plasma of stars. An important note before moving forward: plasma is an extremely hot gas made up of particles endowed with an electrical charge, which is why it can be confined inside a magnetic field. This knowledge can presumably help scientists very accurately simulate the supernovaswhich are nothing more than the explosions that occur when a massive star loses hydrostatic balance by burning most of its fuel. When a supernova is triggered, a good part of the chemical elements that the star has produced through chemical reactions nuclear fusion It shoots towards the stellar medium with a lot of energy. From supernovae to experimental nuclear fusion reactors Dr. Eliu Huerta, a computational scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory (USA) who has had the opportunity to supervise the work of the ORNL researchers, express clearly why this scientific initiative is so important: “This type of capability has long been the dream of astrophysicists and many other scientists. This is the first time that this level of understanding has been achieved through AI for systems of this complexity (…) The more chaotic the system, the more difficult it is to simulate it.” Understanding very precisely how the plasma of stars behaves is important not only to have more information about supernovae; It is also crucial for predict solar flaresor even to simulate the interaction of the Earth’s magnetic field and the high-energy ionized atomic nuclei that constitute the cosmic radiation. Frontier’s role in this research is critical: it provides the computational power required to train the models needed to generate thousands of detailed plasma simulations. Inside nuclear fusion reactors it is still a challenge to keep turbulence under control However, there is another application in which this technology has the ability to make a difference: the development of nuclear fusion reactors. We can intuitively imagine a nuclear fusion reactor as a pressure cooker in which two essential ingredients are cooked: deuterium and tritium. In order for the nuclei of these two hydrogen isotopes to fuse and release the neutron that will ultimately allow us to obtain a large amount of energy, it is necessary to confine them in an extremely hot plasma. In fact, for this process to take place it must reach a temperature of at least 150 million degrees Celsius. Scientists know how to do it, so subjecting deuterium and tritium nuclei to the pressure and temperature necessary to make them fuse is no longer a problem. What still represents a challenge is to achieve keep turbulence under control. Otherwise the plasma will be destabilized, its density in critical regions will be affected and sustaining the fusion reaction over time will not be possible. The mechanisms that govern this process are very complex, but little by little physicists and engineers working on fusion energy are managing to understand them better. The research of ORNL scientists seeks to better understand the behavior of plasma confined inside the vacuum chamber of experimental nuclear fusion reactors with one purpose: to minimize turbulence so that energy loss is minimal. And they are on the right track. In fact, they already have a system ready that is capable of delivering very detailed turbulence predictions in just a few seconds, thus reducing errors by more than half compared to previous methods. Image | Fusion For Energy More information | ORNL | Interesting Engineering In Xataka | ITER has faced one of the great challenges of nuclear fusion: preventing plasma at 150 million ºC from destroying the reactor

They are going to begin the most ambitious nuclear fusion experiments in history

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The largest experimental reactor of this type tokamak for nuclear fusion that exists is called JT-60SA and it is in Naka, a small city not far from Tokyo (Japan). The construction of this mill began in January 2013, but it was not done from scratch; he did it taking the JT-60 reactor as a starting pointits precursor, a machine that came into operation in 1985 and that for more than three decades has achieved very important milestones in the field of fusion energy. The assembly of the JT-60SA was completed in early 2020, and from the end of 2023 it is ready to start the first tests with plasma. This machine is a device tokamak that just like JET and the future ITER resorts to the magnetic confinement of the ionized plasma. Although the ultimate goal of fusion is to use deuterium and tritium, JT-60SA initially uses only deuterium for its experiments, as it is not designed to handle the high neutron loads of tritium (that will be an ITER task). Either way, 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 impressive are the “specifications” that allow us to form an idea about its performance. And it is capable of confining a plasma with a volume of 130 m³, as well as generating a toroidal magnetic field of 2.25 Tesla and sustaining a current inside the plasma of 5.5 MA (5.5 million amperes). These figures are impressive, and presumably when ITER is ready to begin the first plasma tests its figures will be even more astonishing. An engineering prodigy During the last two years, the Japanese and European engineers working on the JT-60SA reactor have installed several extraordinarily sophisticated systems in this machine that will play a leading role during the next experiment campaign. One of these systems is made up of two ring-shaped coils 8 meters in diameter that have been expressly designed to control the confinement of the plasma that is moving at very high speed inside the vacuum chamber. An amazing note: these two devices were wound directly inside the reactor. However, another of the technological solutions that these engineers have installed in the reactor in recent months is even more amazing. Every time the researchers who operate this very complex machine carry out an experiment with it They need to know with maximum precision possible temperature and electron density of the plasma. The main problem they face is that it is not possible to obtain this data by taking direct measurements. The interaction between the laser and the plasma is what allows engineers to indirectly calculate temperature and density For the fusion of deuterium and tritium nuclei to take place, the plasma containing them must reach a temperature of at least 150 million degrees Celsius, and any sensor that comes into contact with it at this temperature will not survive. This is why the JT-60SA reactor engineers have been forced to develop an extraordinarily sophisticated diagnostic system. Thomson dispersion measurement equipment components have been designed and manufactured in Italy, Romania and Japan. Broadly speaking, this device manages to measure the temperature and density of the plasma electrons by analyzing the light it emits with a high-power laser beam dispersed, precisely, by the plasma electrons themselves. In some way the interaction between the laser and the plasma is what allows engineers indirectly calculate temperature and density. The JT-60SA reactor will have two Thomson dispersion diagnostic systems. The core one has been developed in Japan, and the plasma edge one has been devised in Europe. This enormous effort has been worth it. The reactor is almost ready to start the next experiment campaign. All that remains is to carry out a gradual start-up that will allow testing the main systems of this machine, and at the end of 2026 the experiments will begin. They will last for six months. Most impressively, this campaign will take the JT-60SA to an unprecedented level of current, enabling longer, steady-state plasma pulses to be sustained. The researchers operating the reactor are confident that everything they will learn during these experiments will be very valuable in bringing the future ITER to a successful conclusion. Let’s hope that the performance of the JT-60SA will finally live up to expectations. Image | QST More information | Fusion For Energy In Xataka | The JET reactor has successfully completed its final tests with deuterium and tritium. It is a crucial milestone for nuclear fusion

Germany has a plan to lead the world in nuclear fusion. And it has committed to doing so in the 2030s

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Germany is very serious about nuclear fusion. The state of Bavaria, the company specialized in the development of type nuclear fusion reactors stellarator Proxima Fusion, the energy company RWE AG and the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) have agreed to collaborate in the development and implementation of the first fusion power plant of type stellarator of Europe. And, presumably, the world. Its strategy seeks to bring this facility into operation in the 2030s with the purpose of demonstrating a net energy gain. This simply means that the reactor should be able to produce more energy than it consumes. Alpha, which is what this demonstration fusion reactor will be called, will be built in Garching, very close to the IPP facilities. However, this is not all. And Alpha will be used to test the technological solutions that will later allow the construction of Stellaris, the first commercial plant of stellarator type fusion energy. The latter will be hosted in the town of Gundremmingen. If the organizations involved in this project achieve their goal over the next decade, Germany will consolidate itself as a world power in fusion energy. Germany firmly believes in ‘stellarator’ fusion reactors Experimental nuclear fusion reactors stellarator They represent a very solid alternative to tokamakas ITER either JET. And they are not exactly the result of recent research. In fact, both designs were designed during the 1950s. He stellarator It was designed by the American physicist Lyman Spitzer and served as the foundation on which the plasma physics laboratory at Princeton University (USA) was built. The design tokamakHowever, it was devised by the Soviet physicists Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm and Andrei Dmítrievich Sakharov based on ideas proposed a few years earlier by their colleague Oleg Lavrentiev. Both reactors were designed with the purpose of confining very high temperature plasmaand, curiously, during the 50s and 60s the design stellarator received great support from the scientific community in the West due to its enormous potential. ‘Tokamaks’ require that magnetic fields be generated by coils and induced by the plasma itself However, when Soviet and American scientists published their results and compared them, they realized that tokamak design performance was one or two orders of magnitude better than that of the stellarator. From that moment on, this latter design was largely marginalized. The most obvious difference between one and the other lies in their geometry, but it is enough to investigate a little about both to realize that the reactors stellarator they still have a lot to say. type reactors tokamak They are shaped like a toroid (or donut), and stellarator They have a more complex geometry that resembles a donut twisted on itself. However, the fundamental difference that exists between these two designs is that the reactors tokamak require that the magnetic fields that confine the plasma be generated by coils and induced by the plasma itself, while in reactors stellarator everything is done with coils. There is no current within the plasma. This means, in short, that the latter are more complex and difficult to build. In Europe we have a type fusion reactor stellarator extraordinarily promising: Wendelstein 7-X. It is installed in one of the buildings of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald (Germany), and its construction was completed in 2015. The first tests carried out in this fusion reactor between 2015 and 2018 went as planned, so in November of this last year an important moment arrived in its itinerary: it was necessary to modify it to install a water cooling system that was capable of more effectively evacuating the residual thermal energy from the walls. of the vacuum chamber, as well as a system that would allow the plasma to reach a higher temperature. The work that required these modifications was successfully completed in August 2022. And in February 2023, the Wendelstein 7-X reactor reached an important milestone: it managed to confine and stabilize the plasma for 8 uninterrupted minutes in which it delivered a total energy of 1.3 gigajoules. During the last two years everything learned in the development and the first tests carried out on this machine has been used by Proxima Fusion. In fact, its founders come from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. If Alpha goes well, commercial fusion energy will be a reality before the end of the next decade. This is the true purpose of Proxima Fusion. Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini More information | Interesting Engineering In Xataka | An alternative to ITER in nuclear fusion is being cooked in France: a commercial ‘stellarator’ reactor

The future of energy lies in fusion, and China aims to light the first light bulb with the power of the Sun in 2030

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When we think of the future energyit is easy for us to think about renewables. Much of Europe has a while running with renewables, China is an expanding power and even some states in the United States They are seeing its benefits. However, the future lies in nuclear power. But not because of fission, but for the fusion. And China has just taken a giant step in the forecasts of its BEST program with a single objective. Replicate the process that powers the Sun. China and the ultimate energy. Fusion and fission are nuclear reactions that release energy from the nucleus of the atom, and That’s where their similarities end.. Briefly, fission consists of breaking the nuclei of heavy atoms such as uranium to release energy. It is the process that we use in current nuclear power plantsand decades ago we managed to make it something stable. Fusion is the reverse process: it joins light atoms to generate energy. It is tremendously unstable and the heat generated is enormous, but the process generates a much higher amount of energy. Imitate that star power It is extremely complex, but we have been trying to replicate it for years for a very simple reason: it is estimated that it will offer almost unlimited energy and long-lasting waste-freesomething against which nuclear fission can’t compete. China is one of the countries that is pushing the development of nuclear fusion plants the most, so much so that it intends to put the first plant into operation a decade before its competitors. EAST. It stands for ‘Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak’, an experimental program that China has been developing since 2006 to test the viability of commercial fusion energy. After setting some records for temperature and operating time, in 2021 achieved continuous plasma operation for 17 minutes in which the core operated at 70 million degrees Celsius. They are five times the sun temperature and, although temperatures of up to 160 million degrees were previously achieved for 20 seconds, the ideal is to maintain a very high temperature for as long as possible. Steps have continued to be taken and researchers recently discovered that the reactor could work at 165% of its maximum theoretical capacity without suffering disruptions. To contextualize, it is as if we have an engine designed to go at 200 km/h, but we discover that we can drive at 330 km/h constantly without it overheating. In short: China is taking steps to control the enormous challenge represented by the magnetic confinement of plasma. BEST. The ‘Burning Plasma Experimental Superconducting Tokamak’, for its part, is the spearhead of its nuclear fusion program. If EAST is the proof of concept, BEST is the demonstration of feasibility. The EAST steps are those that will be replicated in BEST, a reactor built on a larger scale that will operate for a shorter period of time in a sustained manner, but under conditions of greater energy gain. Goal: 2030. China began construction of the BEST in 2023 and hopes to complete it by 2027 to begin testing with plasma. If it goes well, the CFETR reactor will be the one that pours fusion energy into the grid. In a statement published by the state media Xinhuawe see that the intention is to generate electricity by 2030 and start do it commercially by 2035. If the goal is reached, China will be the first country that will be able to commercially emulate the power of the Sun to light the “first nuclear fusion light bulb” in history. Although, of course, the United States and Massachusetts They also say that they will be the first. They are not the only ones. If they reach the goal, it will be a fundamental step in achieving new generation energy, and they want to reach that future a decade before the rest of the countries, or so China suggests. In this race for nuclear fusion, the BEST is expected to begin operating commercially between 2030 and 2035. Meanwhile, in France there is the ITER. With 24,000 million euros in budgetis the most expensive international program in history, only surpassed by the Apollo Programthe International Space Stationhe Manhattan Project or the GPS system. It aims to be very powerful, but has constant delaysa budget that has overflowed and an operational date that has not been fulfilled. In the United States, a private startup is building SPARCmuch smaller than ITER, but more profitable. United Kingdom has the STEPJapan JT-60SA and Russia the T-15MD Hybrid. Talking about dates is complicated, since there were tests that were expected to be obtained in 2025 and were not achieved… and there is talk of between 2040 and 2060 for the commercial viability of this energy “from the stars”, although the calendars have been readjusted. China has turned new generation energy in a matter of stateand we will see if they meet their goal of starting production in 2030. And, although it seems that we have to put the artificial intelligence even in the soup, the enormous energy needs of this technology are encouraging advances in nuclear fusion. The joke that nuclear fusion energy always has 30 years to go may have come to an end. Images | Oak Ridge National LaboratoryNASA In Xataka | Europe is looking for where to put its first nuclear fusion reactor. And Spain is one of the best candidates

The SPARC fusion reactor is the “microchip” of the future for AI

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The “30 years to merger” joke is officially dead in Massachusetts. With the installation of the first high-temperature superconducting magnet in the SPARC reactor, the era of experimentation has given way to the era of manufacturing. With a calendar marking 2027 as the year of the ‘First Plasma’, humanity is just months away from proving that the Sun can be bottled commercially. The rebirth in the desert. The epicenter of this change is the alliance between Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), chip giant Nvidia and industrial powerhouse Siemens at CES 2026 in Las Vegas. As detailed by the agenciesthe three companies have joined forces to create a “digital twin” of SPARC, the demonstration reactor CFS is building outside Boston. This announcement is not just a declaration of intent. As Seeking Alpha reportsCFS has already installed the first of 18 high-temperature superconducting magnets that form the heart of SPARC. According to CFS CEO Bob Mumgaard, in statements to Fortune: “These magnets are powerful enough to lift an aircraft carrier out of the water.” The paradox of AI. As Siemens CEO Roland Busch warned, on the CES stageAI factories and data centers require constant gigawatts of electricity to operate, but AI is, in turn, the tool that will provide that energy. Check a plasma at 100 million degrees Celsius It is an engineering challenge that the human mind cannot solve alone. As Latitude Media explainsthe collaboration with Nvidia makes it possible to compress “years of manual experimentation into just weeks of virtual optimization.” The Digital “Brain” of Fusion. The key to CFS achieving what no one has been able to do in decades lies in an unprecedented digital infrastructure. The company isn’t just welding steel; He is building the reactor twice: once in the real world and once in the virtual one. To do this, it uses the Siemens Xcelerator ecosystem in industrial design and Nvidia’s Omniverse platform to give life to an exact replica of the SPARC reactor. This system works as a sophisticated flight simulator. Bob Mumgaard, CEO of CFS, details what they use an aerial analogy to explain this technological hierarchy; While the digital twin developed with Nvidia acts as the “virtual plane”, Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence functions as the “co-pilot” that helps navigate the plasma turbulence. This strategy allows you to say “goodbye to guesswork.” As Del Costy states, Siemens executive, “the data doesn’t lie.” The real value of this collaboration is the ability to run thousands of virtual scenarios before moving a single magnet in the physical plant. This technology is what allows engineers to observe in real time what happens inside the magnetic “doughnut” (the tokamak) without having to open the machinery, eliminating the uncertainty that has held back the industry for half a century. The political board. So far, the merger is one of the few issues that enjoys bipartisan support in the United States. However, a new player has shaken the board: Trump Media & Technology Group. According to World Nuclear NewsPresident Donald Trump’s company has merged with TAE Technologies in a $6 billion deal. The goal is to create the first publicly traded fusion energy player to ensure America’s “energy and AI supremacy.” Although CFS and TAE use different technologies – CFS relies on the tokamak and superconducting magnets, while TAE uses particle accelerators and hydrogen and boron fuel – the competition to be the first to inject electricity into the grid is total. CFS also looks askance to Helion, the startup backed by Sam Altman (OpenAI), which you already have a contract to supply power to Microsoft. The horizon. The roadmap presented by CFS, supported by capital from Bill Gates and Mitsubishiseems for the first time tangible: Late 2026: End of SPARC construction in Massachusetts. It will be the time when the “virtual airplane” designed by Nvidia and Siemens fully materializes in the physical world. 2027: The moment of the “First Plasma”. SPARC must turn on its magnetic heart to produce its first plasma and scientifically demonstrate “Q greater than 1”: generating more energy than it consumes. Early 2030s: ARC debuts in Virginia. A 400 megawatt commercial plant capable of supplying 300,000 homes with clean energy literally extracted from hydrogen particles present in water. The end of the “30 years” joke For decades, the scientific community joked that fusion was always 30 years away. But with the backing of Nvidia and Google, the merger has ceased to be a laboratory project and has become a manufacturing industry. “Lego” is complicated, but with instructions from AI and capital from tech giants, the Sun is closer than ever to being bottled up on Earth. Image | CFS Xataka | Russia wants to be the one who turns on the light on the Moon: its plan involves an operational nuclear reactor before 2036

fusion energy no longer has a ceiling

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For four decades, nuclear fusion scientists have lived under the shadow of a figure: the Greenwald limit. Something that, in essence, is the “glass ceiling” of the reactors tokamak type and that supposedly prevents them from producing more energy than they could. But the one known as the China’s ‘artificial sun’ has broken this ceiling completely, and on top of it in a stable way (surpassing the European model). The Greenwald Wall. To understand the achievement, you must first understand the problem. In a fusion reactorthe power you generate depends on the square of the density, this way, The more density there is inside the reactor, the more energy it will produce.. However, in 1989 the physicist Martin Greenwald formulated a rule that has remained unbeaten: there is a maximum density. If this maximum density is exceeded, the plasma inside the reactor becomes unstable. What does this mean? Well, if this line is passed, the edge of the plasma cools down too much due to radiation, the electrical current contracts and the reactor suffers a disruptiona sudden stop that can even damage the reactor structure. Bordering the limit. In this way, nuclear physicists have always been very attentive to this limitsince exceeding it can generate great chaos in a nuclear power plant. But logically what is always sought is to get the most out of all the resources available, which is why they have always been working very close to this limit, but never without exceeding it. Until in the end it has been possible to overcome it and remove this limitation from the ‘speedometers’ of nuclear energy. The study. The researchers They have achieved this fact, as they have reported in their article published in Science Advancewhere they point out that they have managed to achieve stable densities of between 1.3 and 1.65 times the Greenwald limit. It was not by brute force, but by experimental “finesse”. Something that they have been able to achieve within the Chinese Artificial Sun. This means that the reactor has been able to work at 165% of its maximum theoretical capacity without suffering any disruption. It is as if we had discovered that an engine designed to go 200 km/h can travel at 330 km/h constantly and without overheating. How has he achieved it? The key has not been just to “put in more gas”, but to change the way in which the Artificial Sun interacts with its own walls. Unlike other reactors, the Chinese Artificial Sun has tungsten on its walls, which is a metal that withstands heat better and makes the plasma less dirty. In addition to this property of its walls, The researchers used high-power microwave waves to heat and “clean” the plasma just before ignition. This is in addition to the fact that they were able to validate a new theory that says that, under certain conditions, the plasma “organizes itself” to move away from the walls and remain stable, even if the density is extreme. Real energy. What China’s Artificial Sun has shown is that the “density-free” regime is real. This changes the rules of the game for ITER (the large international reactor being built in France) and for the future CFETRthe reactor with which China hopes to begin pouring fusion energy into the electrical grid before 2040. Its importance. With this new milestone, making giant reactors will no longer make sense, since with this new theory we no longer need gigantic machines to obtain the same energy. Furthermore, by operating in this new regime, the risk of plasma damaging the reactor is drastically reduced, since you will not be “playing” with the limit. But the most relevant thing is that it has been seen that the denser the plasma is, the closer we are to “ignition”, the point where the Artificial Sun generates more energy than it consumes. This may mean that we are closer to the longed for infinite energy. Images | Daniele La Rosa Messina POT In Xataka | China has discovered an energy source so massive it potentially lasts 60,000 years. The bad news: it’s thorium

plasma in a nuclear fusion reactor, in color and at 16,000 fps

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Seeing the inside of a nuclear fusion reactor is, for obvious reasons, complicated. We are talking about temperatures of millions of degrees Celsius, hotter than the core of the Sun. However, the British company Tokamak Energy has just given us unprecedented images of what is happening inside its ST40 spherical reactor: a video in full color and at the incredible speed of 16,000 frames per second. An unprecedented ballet of colors. What we are seeing in the video is, in essence, the choreography of the elements within the tokamak. The ST40, like most of these reactors, uses hydrogen isotopes (deuterium in this case) as fuel. When this gas turns into plasma, it emits a characteristic pink light, which dominates the scene. But the interesting part begins when researchers introduce lithium, which glows red. And no, this is not just a visual spectacle. Every color, every bright filament we see in these images, is a gold mine of information that is helping scientists solve one of the biggest challenges on the long road to commercial fusion energy: how to tame plasma so that it does not degrade reactor materials. What exactly are we seeing? In the images, we see how small granules of lithium are injected into the reactor chamber. Upon entering the outer, colder areas of the plasma, the neutral lithium is excited and emits an intense crimson red light. As they penetrate the hottest and densest regions, lithium atoms lose an electron, become ionized (becoming lithium ions), and begin to glow greenish. Once ionized, lithium no longer moves freely. It is forced to follow the invisible, but very powerful magnetic field lines that confine the plasma. Those green filaments that we see dancing in the video are, literally, the lithium drawing the magnetic cage of the reactor. What is all this for? The lithium acts as a protective shield for the reactor. Recording what happens in color is not easy, but it helps identify whether the impurities that Totakak Energy is introducing into the reactor radiate in the expected place. And if the lithium powders penetrate to the core of the plasma. This experiment is part of research into a mode of operation called the “X-point radiator” (XPR) that uses elements such as lithium so that the edge of the plasma radiates and loses a large amount of heat before touching the reactor walls. It is a protective “atmosphere” that cools the plasma just at the last moment, reducing component wear without sacrificing core performance. The advancement of Tokamak Energy. This approach is the centerpiece of the Dell ST40 upgrade program, which has received funding from the US and UK energy departments. The goal is to coat all the components that face the plasma with lithium, a technique that has already been demonstrated in other laboratories, such as Princeton, to improve plasma performance. This type of visual diagnostics complement the incredibly complex systems that are being installed in reactors such as the JT-60SA in Japan, the most advanced tokamak in the world currentlywhich uses lasers to measure plasma temperature and density indirectly. A global career. While colossal and institutional projects such as ITER They mark a long-term pathwhich plans its first deuterium-tritium experiments by 2039, more agile companies like Tokamak Energy are exploring new designs and technologies, such as spherical tokamaks and high-temperature superconducting magnets, to accelerate the arrival of commercial fusion. The closure of the historic JET reactor in the United Kingdom, who said goodbye breaking an energy recordmarked the end of an era, but its legacy is the foundation on which all these new advances are built. This new window into the heart of plasma is not only visually impressive. It is a small step that brings us a little closer to the goal of replicating the energy of stars on Earth. Nuclear fusion just got a lot more colorful, and that’s great news. Image | Tokamak Energy In Xataka | While the West still waits for fusion energy, China has found a shortcut

The largest nuclear fusion project on the planet has survived the setbacks. This is the date on which Iter should be ready

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2024 was a difficult year for ITER (International Thermonuclear Experctor reactor). This experimental reactor of nuclear fusion It is being built in the French town of Cadarache by an international consortium Led by the European Union. Although it was conceived in 2006 and the project was officially launched in 2007, the beginning of the assembly of this titanic machine did not start until 2020. The initial itinerary Proposed by Eurofusion, which is the institution that is responsible for promoting and supporting the scientific research necessary to bring to fruition the European Nuclear Fusion Plan, established that in 2025 the assembly of this machine would end. However, that same year another crucial milestone would arrive: the first tests with plasma would start. Three years later, in 2028, Iter engineers would begin the low power with hydrogen and helium, and in 2032 the first high -power experiments would arrive with these two gases. Finally, in 2035, Iter would be able to undertake high power tests with deuterium and tritium. And in 2040 this experimental reactor would demonstrate the energy profitability of nuclear fusion. Finally this will not happen like this. In 2022 the French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) identified several irregularities of a strictly technical nature in Vacuum Chamber sectorswhich caused the Iter organization to react as it should do so: constituting a working group to address the complementary requests of the ASN and advance with the reactor assembly Tokamak. Iter’s technical challenges are unpublished Assembling a machine as complex as it is it is not easy. The vacuum chamber weighs 8,000 tons, is made of stainless steel and boron and must remain hermetically sealed. Its assembly has forced engineers to deal with extraordinarily strict local tolerances of 0.1%, and, in addition, the camera has a very complicated shape and uses plates with thicknesses up to 60 mm. To solve the assembly the technicians have had to resort to state -of -the -art technologies, such as the Electron Beam Weldingwhich is welding using an electron beam, or The design of AI models specifically conceived to identify defects in the welds of the camera. The Covid-19 Pandemia that raised very crudely during the 2020s and 2021, and, on the other hand, the technical challenges derived from the completely unpublished nature of much of the components that need to be tuning so that Iter arrives in fruition have caused that The main milestones of this project are delayed. Nevertheless, The current updated itinerary proposes several important dates that interest us know. In 2039 Iter will be able to undertake high power tests with deuterium and tritium In 2034 the first experiments will be carried out in the reactor; In 2036 the magnetic system responsible for confinement of plasma to maximum power will be tested; And finally, in 2039 Iter will be able to undertake high power tests with deuterium and tritium. Initially this last milestone was going to arrive in 2035. Whatever it is during the last year the Iter assembly has advanced at a good pace. In the cover image of this article we can see two of the titanic sectors of the vacuum chamber, although, in my opinion, one of The milestones that this project has achieved This year It was consolidated in May. The superconductor magnets placed on the outside of the vacuum chamber of this nuclear fusion reactor have the responsibility of generating the magnetic field necessary to confine plasma inside. They are also responsible for controlling and stabilizing it. These magnets weigh 10,000 tons and are manufactured in an alloy of niobio and tin, or niobio and titanium, which acquires the superconductivity when cools with a supercritical helium until reaching a temperature of -269 ºC. This requirement justifies the need to put a powerful cooling system like the one that has devised Europe for Iter. In the construction of this experimental nuclear fusion reactor, the US, Russia, China, India, South Korea, Japan and the United Kingdom, but the cryogenization plant have been commissioned by Fusion for Energy (F4E), the organization of the European Union that coordinates the contribution of Europe to the development of Iter, the French company Air Liquide and technical integrated technicians in the Iter structure. Superconductor magnets acquire superconductivity when they reach a temperature of -269 ºC This extreme refrigeration installation will be responsible for supplying liquid helium to 4.5 Kelvin (-269 ° C) to superconductor magnets and criobombs, and also gaseous helium at 80 Kelvin (-193 ºC) to thermal shields. Creobombs are empty ultraalt devices that are responsible for eliminating gases inside the vacuum chamber. To do it They must work at an extremely low temperature. And, on the other hand, the thermal shields are responsible for protecting some critical elements of the reactor, such as superconductor magnets, the heat that emits the confined plasma inside the vacuum chamber. Iter’s cryogenic plant has an area similar to that of a football field (just over 7,100 m²) and contains several 26 -meter high storage tanks. These figures help us intuit how enormous this critical installation is. As we have just verified, without it the nuclear fusion would be absolutely impossible. This Grigory Kouzmenko statementF4E manager, invites us to tie Iter’s future with a reasonable optimism: “We have entered the most exciting phase of the project, in which all the efforts of previous years finally are specified and we can benefit from the collaboration based on the confidence between all the parties.” Image | Fusion for Energy More information | ITER In Xataka | From today Spain has the key to nuclear fusion: Granada’s particle accelerator is already a reality

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