A magnetic doughnut with a hot plasma filling has produced a record 12
megawatts of nuclear fusion power for a little less than a second. The
experiment, at the Joint European Torus (JET) in Culham, Oxfordshire, fused the
hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium.
Sustainable fusion power is still a long way off: heating the atoms and
keeping them confined required twice the amount of energy released. But Martin
Keilhacker, JET鈥檚 director, says the reactor will run in other configurations in
coming weeks. 鈥淲e hope to do better,鈥� he says.