Reactor Mimicking Sun Billed As Humanity’s Panacea For Energy Needs

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

TOKYO/BRUSSELS (Worthy News) – Truth be told: It looks like an outsized donut. Yet the six-storey-high machine in a hangar in Naka, north of the Japanese capital, Tokyo, is billed as “the answer to humanity’s future energy needs.”

Enthusiasts call it the world’s most giant experimental nuclear fusion reactor in
operation. The “tokamak” vessel, which has now officially been inaugurated, is to contain swirling plasma heated up to 200 million degrees Celsius (360 million degrees Fahrenheit).

It is a joint project by the European Union and Japan and the forerunner for its big brother in France, the under-construction International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).

The goal of the reactor, with the arguably less inspiring name JT-60SA, is to investigate the feasibility of fusion as a safe, large-scale “and carbon-free source of net energy” – with more energy generated than is put into producing it.

Fusion differs from fission, the technique currently used in nuclear power plants, by fusing two atomic nuclei instead of splitting one, experts explain.

And unlike fission, fusion carries “no risk” of catastrophic nuclear accidents – like that seen in Fukushima in Japan in 2011 – and produces far less radioactive waste than current power plants, claim the project’s promoters.

PRESSURE ON SECTOR

It also comes amid pressure on the energy sector to find alternatives to fossil fuels such as coal, petroleum, and natural gas that climate-change-worriers say endanger the world.

The ultimate aim of both projects in Japan and France is to coax hydrogen nuclei inside to fuse into one heavier element, helium, releasing energy in the form of light and heat.

That process would be mimicking the process that takes place inside the Sun, according to experts familiar with the projects.

Sam Davis, deputy project leader for the JT-60SA, said the device would “bring us closer to fusion energy.”

“It’s the result of a collaboration between more than 500 scientists and engineers and more than 70 companies throughout Europe and Japan,” Davis said at the inauguration.

While it remains unclear when and if the $608 million reactor will prove to be the panacea for the world’s energy consumption requirements, those supporting it seem to believe it sets the standards for a new era under the Sun.

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