World’s largest nuclear fusion reactor opened in Japan

The “JT-60SA” reactor, which represents the joint initiative between the European Union and Japan with the aim of establishing nuclear fusion as a sustainable and clean energy source in the future, started its official operations in Japan. In the press release made by the European Energy Commission, the support of both the EU and Japan for JT-60SA was underlined during the opening ceremony. JT-60SA carried out its first plasma production in October.

The most advanced and largest nuclear fusion reactor

The world’s largest and most advanced tokamak fusion reactor, the EU/Japanese 370-tonne JT-60SA reactor, was ignited for the first time at an opening ceremony in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan.

First designed by Soviet scientists in the 1950s, tokamaks are toroidal reactors, one of the leading approaches to becoming the first commercially viable fusion power plants. For those who don’t know, in these reactors, fusion reactions take place in a ring-shaped chamber and magnetic fields are used to trap extremely hot plasma. This experimental reactor was built to raise the temperature of the plasma to an incredible 200 million degrees Celsius and keep it there stably for just 100 seconds. This significantly exceeds the capacity of previous large tokamaks.

Although tokomaks are simple in concept and relatively easy to build, in practice it is extremely difficult to keep them sustainable, that is, to get more energy than they are supplied. While the Japan Torus-60 (JT-60) project has been ongoing since 1970, JT-60SA appears as the last and largest iteration of this project.

The start of operation of the JT-60SA was celebrated with an official ceremony on 1 December 2023 by EU Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson and Japan’s Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Masahito Moriyama. Although the improved reactor is still not close to being a practical energy generator, it will be used to overcome many problems, as well as to test the materials and procedures that will be needed for commercial stations.

Reaching fusion energy is only a matter of time

For 75 years we have been told that fusion power is only 25 years away, and billions of dollars have been spent to make it practical. Nowadays, it’s just a matter of time. Countries, especially China, Japan, the EU and the USA, are carrying out various fusion projects. A net energy surplus was achieved several times, but more testing is required and these reactors are being built for this.

The main goal is to artificially realize the natural process that occurs in stars like the Sun on Earth and thus unlock unlimited energy. In the simplest way, fusion reactors aim to convert hydrogen into helium by imitating the fusion mechanism of the Sun and to use the enormous energy released in a practical way.