KSTAR, the Korean artificial sun, broke all records, keeping the temperature of 20 million degrees for 100 seconds
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himIt is called the 'artificial sun' and actually a more appropriate nickname could not exist: the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) broke all records, maintaining the temperature of 20 million degrees for 100 seconds. The news, released on Christmas Eve, went around the world.
The KSTAR is an advanced research device on magnetic nuclear fusion, built at the National Fusion Research Institute in Daejeon, South Korea. With the aim of studying the possibility of obtaining magnetic fusion energy, it was approved in 1995 but has undergone delays due to the East Asian financial crisis which significantly weakened the South Korean economy. However, on 14 September 2007, the plant was completed and the first active plasma was produced in June 2008.
Il tokamak it is not itself a new device and there are others in the world. The word is the acronym of a Russian expression that means "magnetic toroidal chamber" and generally indicates a toroidal (donut) shaped machine where a hot and rarefied gas (usually hydrogen) (in the state of matter called plasma) is kept cohesive and away from the internal walls by a strong magnetic field created by devices external to the chamber and which actually surround it.
Already in the past, with other similar devices, it has been shown that the controlled thermonuclear fusion, that is the process by which nuclei of atoms merge, releasing a large amount of energy potentially usable as electricity, but without the risks and production of waste typical of nuclear fission plants (Read also: Wheat from Chernobyl is still contaminated, even what grows outside the exclusion zone).
The novelty of the Korean project, actually the result of an international collaboration, is having built a tokamak with superconducting magnets, where therefore the electric current is conducted infinitely and perfectly, without loss of power because of zero resistance. A panacea for all "energy evils".
And it seems that the idea works very well, continuing to break records. On December 24, a new one was announced: the plant has maintained 100 million degrees for 20 seconds, getting closer and closer to the target, set for 2025, that the Korean tokamak should maintain stellar temperatures for at least 300 seconds.
©National Research Council of Science & Technology
These results are possible thanks to the superconductivity. In fact, there have been other fusion devices that briefly handled the plasma at temperatures of 100 million degrees or higher, but none of them broke the barrier of maintaining operation for 10 seconds or more, because normally conduction occurs. objective structural limit.
"The technologies required for long operations of 100 million degrees of plasma are the key to the realization of fusion energy - explains Si-Woo Yoon, director of the KSTAR Research Center at the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy - and the success of KSTAR in keeping the plasma at a high temperature for 20 seconds it will be a important turning point in the race to ensure high-performance plasma long operation technologies, a key component of a commercial nuclear fusion reactor in the future".
In 5 years, then, the world may indeed have a way to go produce clean energy with the aim of forgetting fossil sources forever.
Sources of reference: Phys.org / Korea Institute of Fusion Energy
Read also:
- NASA has found another way to nuclear fusion
- MIT and ENI together for unlimited clean energy
- They create the world's first superconductor that works at room temperature
