European scientists have achieved a great success on the way to energy production by fusion plasmas: At the world's largest fusion facility, JET, in Culham, near Oxford, UK, they produced stable plasmas with an energy output of 59 megajoules.
The Joint European Torus (JET) is the only facility in the world capable of conducting experiments with the fuel of future fusion power plants, a mixture of deuterium and tritium. The results of the experiments with JET are therefore of great importance for ITER and other future power plants.
On Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022, the results of the DT2 campaign conducted with JET in 2021 were presented at the UKAEA site in Culham, United Kingdom. The energy output of 59 megajoules achieved in the process more than doubles the previous fusion energy record of 22 megajoules set in 1997.
These results are fully consistent with theoretical predictions and thus strengthen the case for ITER. They are also clear evidence of the potential of fusion energy to provide safe and sustainable low-carbon energy.
Austrian media (e.g. ORF Science, APA Science, DerStandard, Wiener Zeitung, Futurezone) also reported extensively on the groundbreaking JET results.
The press event with, among others, George Freeman (UK Science Minister), Ian Chapman (UKAEA) and Tim Luce (ITER) can be viewed here.