Birthday party in Lausanne: Swiss nuclear fusion reactor turns 30

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The goal of scientists at EPFL is to produce clean energy with a nuclear fusion reactor. “We’re basically copying the sun. We are reproducing the fusion reactions of the sun,” Yves Martin, deputy director of the Swiss Plasma Center at EPFL, said in an interview with the Keystone-SDA news agency.

But there’s still a long way to go until then. These reactors still consume much more energy than they produce.

However, according to EPFL, scientists can already perform such nuclear fusions on Earth. The challenge is to sustain these reactions over a longer period of time and use the resulting heat efficiently to convert it into electricity.

Research is being carried out at the Swiss Plasma Center at EPFL on how this can be achieved in tokamak. Scientists heat a gas in the tokamak to over a hundred million degrees Celsius to turn it into plasma. This causes the particles to overcome their electrical repulsion and combine to form heavier nuclei such as helium. This releases a huge amount of energy.

The tokamak is a large metal ring surrounded by electromagnets. The magnetic field keeps the hot plasma locked and suspended in the combustion chamber. Because when the plasma contacts the vessel walls, it immediately cools down.

“We built the reactor before the internet age and its core is still the same,” EPFL’s Basil Duval was quoted as saying. Physicist works with tokamak.

According to EPFL, due to its unique design, this experimental reactor has become one of the most important research facilities for nuclear fusion in Europe. “For a country the size of Switzerland to have an experimental facility of this caliber is truly extraordinary,” Duval said.

(SDA)

Source : Blick