30 Seconds Of 100,000,000° Celsius
The South Korean tokamak KSTAR achieved a new world record. It managed to hold plasma at a temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius for 30 seconds.
Image by Sergey Katyshkin from Pixabay
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Lately, we have witnessed many various records coming from many different fusion facilities around the world. Scientists are researching fusion from all possible angles, with different experimental systems with the idea they will be the ones to create clean, effective, and almost inexhaustible energy. One great example of this is the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) in South Korea.
There is a decent number of tokamaks in the world. From the gigantic ITER in France to promising experimental tokamaks such as is KSTAR. The South Korean tokamak was launched in 2008 and in 2016 it achieved a nice world record of holding 50 million-degree plasma for 70 seconds. This record was surpassed by the Chinese Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) that held such plasma for 102 seconds.
But the goal of these devices is to create plasma hotter than 100 million degrees. And KSTAR achieved that in 2018 but just for 1.5 seconds. Then in 2019, they prolonged it to 8 seconds and last December (2020) it was 20 seconds.
According to recent news, the KSTAR’s team achieved a new significant milestone. Holding the 100 million-degree plasma for 30 seconds. You might be thinking this isn’t that big of a step but every single second that we get requires incredible technological progress that takes us closer to getting energy out of fusion. In this case, the record was achieved thanks to ingenious optimizations of magnetic fields and other systems.
So, what is the final goal for KSTAR? By 2026 they want to hold 100 million-degree plasma for 300 seconds.
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