{"id":47858,"date":"2023-02-17T10:00:14","date_gmt":"2023-02-17T09:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ferrovial.com\/blog\/?p=47858"},"modified":"2025-12-12T11:55:02","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T10:55:02","slug":"artificial-suns-progress-in-nuclear-fusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ferrovial.com\/blog\/en\/2023\/02\/artificial-suns-progress-in-nuclear-fusion\/","title":{"rendered":"Artificial suns: Progress in nuclear fusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

China’s artificial sun<\/i><\/b> \u00a0in Hefei (\u5408\u80a5) dominated headlines in the first months of 2022; so would the successful ignition at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California (United States) at the end of that same year. What does energy from nuclear fusion entail? Why does it still elude us almost seventy years after its conception? And most importantly, what has been achieved during those years that gives us hope for a more sustainable, decarbonized world? This is how nuclear fusion engineering<\/b> has advanced.<\/p>\n

Nuclear fusion, clean nuclear fusion<\/h2>\n

The term <\/span>nuclear<\/span><\/i> has lots of negative connotations due to certain accidents in nuclear fusion technology; Chernobyl is the first to come to mind. However, the branch of study dealing with these subatomic properties of nature has come up with technology like <\/span>nuclear medicine<\/b> that saves lives on a daily basis, <\/span>food irradiation<\/b> to eliminate pathogens, and <\/span>nuclear fusion technology<\/b>, which promises to be one of the sustainable energy sources of the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unlike nuclear fission, which splits heavy atoms and generates long-lasting radioactive waste, <\/span>nuclear fusion unites light atoms<\/b> to give rise to reactions that are the opposite of fission. These types of reactions actually occur in the Sun. Nuclear fusion does not produce long-lasting nuclear waste, nor can it undergo destructive chain reactions, radioactive leaks, or deflagration. Nor does it hold military potential like big explosions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since the <\/span>only thing<\/span><\/i> nuclear fusion needs are light atoms like hydrogen (which is everywhere) and input energy, it is considered to be a technology with great potential for sustainability and decarbonization. If stable production and commercialization were achieved, as the<\/span> international project ITER<\/span><\/a> hopes to do, this could drastically reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Despite the advances in engineering, this technology continues to evade us and is still several decades away.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Interior<\/p>\n

Interior of the ITER<\/span><\/a> nuclear fusion reactor<\/em><\/p>\n

Major advances in engineering in recent years<\/h2>\n

In the last few years, incredible advances in engineering have been made; thanks to this, fusion nuclear reactors of various types have achieved previously unprecedented milestones. Here are some of the most significant ones:<\/span><\/p>\n

The tokamak HL-2M from Chengdu (China) managed to operate at <\/span>150 million degrees for 10 seconds<\/b> in 2021. In May of that same year, the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) in Hefei reached 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds, and in December, they stabilized 70 million degrees Celsius for 17 minutes at the same facility.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the end of that year, an MIT team achieved another<\/span> milestone in magnetic field strength<\/span><\/a> with its SPARC reactor. The magnetic field is key both in tokamak containment and in smaller reactors. This team reached <\/span>20 teslas of magnetic field for five hours<\/b>. In comparison, the Earth has a field of 0.00007 T.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unlike experimental reactors like ITER, SPARC is <\/span>designed for commercial use<\/b>. As David Kirtley, CEO of Helion Energy, points out in <\/span>Why Nuclear Fusion Is Closer Than You Think<\/span><\/a>, this reactor design is more interesting for commercial purposes because<\/span> it ‘captures’ electrical energy directly<\/span><\/a> and doesn’t go through turbines or systems that make it lose efficiency. In addition, they work in parallel with several generations of reactors to speed up the process. What they learn with tests using 5 or 6 of them is applied to design the seventh, <\/span>speeding up the innovation calendar<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n