You probably haven’t noticed anything different but
just a few hours ago the world took a major step towards the
goal of attaining clean, boundless energy through nuclear fusion. Physicists in
Germany declared that they've just fired up one of the world's major nuclear fusion machines for the first time ever – and it was effectively able to hold
super-hot blobs of helium gas, also known as plasma. The 16-metre-wide machine
is known as the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) and it's a kind of nuclear fusion device
called a stellarator. Researchers have been speaking about the huge potential
of stellarators for decades now, but this is the first time a group scientists has
revealed that it can produce and control plasma just as well as other fusion
reactor designs.
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And this is one of the reason why the launch of the
stellarator is so thrilling, as it's projected that the device will be able to
contain plasma for an unheard-of 30 minutes at a time. Hans-Stephan Bosch, who
led the team, said "We’re very satisfied. Everything went according to
plan."
To be clear on one thing, the point of W7-X has
never been to actually harvest energy. This device is only a proof-of-concept
to demonstrate that the stellarator idea really works.
If everything goes accordingly to the plan, the
things we pick up from W7-X will help us construct the next-generation of
stellarators, which can quite literally change the world, and end our dependence
on fossil fuels forever.
