World record nuclear fusion gives Swiss experts confidence

There is still a long way to go to produce electricity using nuclear fusion. According to a Swiss expert, the new world record announced on Thursday with the European nuclear fusion power plant ‘Jet’ is encouraging.

“This new record gives us confidence for the future,” Yves Martin said on Thursday at the request of the Keystone-SDA news agency. Martin is deputy director of the Swiss Plasma Center at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), which is involved in the record-breaking project.

The new record was set during one of the last experiments at the “Jet” fusion facility. After 40 years, the factory ceased operations in December 2023. “The fact that we have been able to make such progress with the system even after forty years is a very good sign of the progress we will make with the new fusion reactor ‘Iter’,” said Martin. “Iter” (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is a large-scale international project currently building a test reactor in France.

The 69 megajoules achieved in the new experiment roughly corresponds to the energy a washing machine needs to run for ten hours. While that doesn’t sound like much, keep in mind that it only took about five seconds to produce this energy, Martin said. The energy balance of the experiment was also negative: according to Martin, about three times more energy was invested than was produced.

According to Martin, the fact that more energy has not been produced is a matter of the size of the system. He was convinced that a positive energy balance could be created on the “Iter”.

Martin estimates that it will take about twenty years before electricity can be produced for households. ‘We expect the first prototypes of fusion reactors to be ready in 2045’ said the researcher. (saw/sda)