We’ve been hearing for thirty years that “nuclear fusion power is thirty years away”. Is it finally happening?
LondonCNN — Scientists and engineers near the English city of Oxford have set a
nuclear fusion energy record, they announced Thursday, bringing the clean, futuristic power source another step closer to reality.
Using the Joint European Torus (JET) — a huge, donut-shaped machine known as a tokamak — the scientists sustained a record 69 megajoules of fusion energy for five seconds, using just 0.2 milligrams of fuel. That’s enough to power roughly 12,000 households for the same amount of time.
Of course even if it works out, it won’t happen for quite a while yet. But it would change all the rules of the energy game …