The world's largest fusion reactor has finally been completed, but it won't run for another 15 years, project scientists have announced.
"Certainly, the delay of ITER is not going in the right direction," Pietro Barabaschi, ITER's director general, said at a news conference on Wednesday ."In terms of the impact of nuclear fusion on the problems humanity faces now, we should not wait for nuclear fusion to resolve them. This is not prudent."
By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.Scientists have been trying to harness the power of nuclear fusion — the process by which stars burn — for more than 70 years. By fusing hydrogen atoms to make helium under extremely high pressures and temperatures, main-sequence stars convert matter into light and heat, generating enormous amounts of energy without producing greenhouse gases or long-lasting radioactive waste.
Keeping the turbulent and superheated coils of plasma in place long enough for nuclear fusion to happen, however, has been challenging. Soviet scientist Natan Yavlinsky designed the first tokamak in 1958, but no one has since managed to create a reactor that is able to put out more energy than it takes in.