GB’s newest fusion reactor, the creature of the Tokamak Energy company, has been turned on and has already achieved first plasma.
Tokamak Energy is one of the world’s leading private fusion energy ventures designing and developing small fusion reactors.
“We are unveiling the first world-class controlled fusion device to have been designed, built and operated by a private venture. The ST40 is a machine that will show fusion temperatures – 100 million degrees – are possible in compact, cost-effective reactors. This will allow fusion power to be achieved in years, not decades.” declares Dr David Kingham, CEO of Tokamak Energy
Fusion synthesis is a process which feeds the Sun and if we manage to achieve its reproduction on Earth, we will become owners of boundless stocks of net energy.
Unlike nuclear power, fusion synthesis doesn't break kernels into parts, but rather connects them. It needs only water and salt as raw materials, producing helium in the form of waste.
However, talking about the development of necessary amount of energy, then for retention of heated up to the improbable temperatures plasma, it is required to use powerful electromagnets.
The next step for the company, therefore, is to instal the full set of super-power magnetic coils that will allow to reach 15 million degrees of plasma temperature – as hot as the centre of the Sun. The company expects to achieve such result in August 2017.
Tokamak's purpose —to heat plasma up to 100 million degrees Celsius in 2018, that is 7 times hotter than the center of the Sun, is however pretty ambitious. It is a thermonuclear threshold at which isotopes of hydrogen begin to connect and "melt" into helium, emitting huge energy.
Such rapid development of devices will help to achieve its ultimate targets - producing first electricity by 2025 and to put fusion power into the grid by 2030.
Current trends show that those segments that were earlier sponsored only by the state or large monopolies even more often began to develop in the form of the private companies with investments of venture capital.
Efficiency of private investments has proved its solvency here: interested in results and a gain of a segment of the market, new technologies, which rather reduce costs and accelerate development of products, is introduced.
