Nuclear fusion record provides hope amid global temperature rise

Scientists at a nuclear fusion reactor in Oxfordshire have set a new record for the amount of energy produced by fusing atoms together.

In what is being called a fitting swan song for the Joint European Torus (JET) laboratory which will now be decommissioned after 40 years of experiments, the researchers produced 69 megajoules of energy over five seconds from a mere 0.2 milligrams of fuel. That’s a blast of energy equivalent to 16.5kg of TNT exploding. Or, more prosaically, as put by the BBC: “Only enough energy for four to five hot baths”.

The process involves adding the elements deuterium and tritium as fuel to a chamber (the technical term for the chamber is “tokamak”) that is heated to 100 million degrees Celsius. This reaction at a temperature hotter than the sun’s core produces helium gas and a huge amount of heat. Indeed, this process is what powers stars, just like our sun. 

This new record comes at what many see as a vital time. The European Union’s climate and weather monitoring service, Copernicus, has recorded a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase in the world’s temperature over the last twelve months. 

Although far off perfection (it must take more energy than four or five hot baths to heat a chamber hotter than the sun), nuclear fusion still might save humanity’s bacon. Unlike fossil fuels which we are so dependent on, fusion is non-polluting. What’s more, unlike fossil fuels which are finite and renewables that are weather dependent, fusion is potentially limitless. 

If (or when) the process is refined and affordable enough to be commercialised, it could well take over from every other means of energy production due to its efficiency. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA): “Fusion could generate four times more energy per kilogram of fuel than fission (used in nuclear power plants) and nearly four million times more energy than burning oil or coal.” 

Now that the reactor at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire is at the end of its life, all eyes turn to projects in America and a major project in southern France. A coalition of 35 countries is building the world’s largest tokamak under the name of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). Any major future breakthroughs are likely to happen here. 

The geopolitical importance of potential fusion breakthroughs has been covered extensively here at Reaction, particularly on our podcasts with Helen Thompson and Ed Conway. How the West manages the green energy transition, and the rare earth metals and substances it requires, has major implications. 

The West relies on its rivals such as Russia and China for much of its energy. As our editor Iain Martin wrote in The Times last November: “Widespread fusion would mean the democracies being far less dependent on the Chinese Communist Party for solar and wind technology. Last year China’s manufacturers supplied nearly 60 per cent of all installed capacity globally, according to the Global Wind Energy Council.”  

While noteworthy, the West’s renewable energy capacity being dependent on Chinese manufacturing is just one piece of the energy transition puzzle; the war in Ukraine and the resulting energy crisis testifies to that.

Western efforts to make fusion viable must go into overdrive.  

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