French scientists on Tuesday announced that they had reached a "crucial milestone" in the long road towards nuclear fusion by managing to maintain raging-hot plasma for a record 22 minutes.
Nuclear fusion has the much-vaunted potential to provide the world with clean, safe and nearly inexhaustible energy -- but the scientific holy grail has remained stubbornly elusive over decades.
The idea is to recreate the process that occurs at the heart of stars by fusing two atomic nuclei. This would be the opposite of fission -- which splits the atom -- that is used in nuclear power plants.
Among other things, the process requires temperatures of more than 100 million degrees Celsius to create and maintain plasma.
This hot, electrically charged gas easily becomes unstable, which can lead to lost energy and limit the efficiency of a possible future nuclear fusion reactor.
The WEST tokamak machine in southern France managed to maintain plasma for 1,337 seconds on February 12, France's Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) said in a statement.
This "smashed" the previous record set in China last month by 25 percent, said the CEA, which runs the tokamak machine.
The CEA's head of fundamental research Anne-Isabelle Etienvre told AFP that achieving plasma for that long shows "that we control its production, but also its maintenance".
But there are still many "technological barriers" to overcome before thermonuclear fusion can "produce more energy than it consumes", she added.
In the coming month, the WEST team is aiming to achieve even longer plasma durations -- "up to several hours combined" -- as well as higher temperatures, according to the CEA
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