Fusion Reactor Sets New Endurance Record

Posted by michael on Tuesday August 6, 2002 @05:17AM from the dilithium-crystals dept.

!splut writes "Fusion fans out there will be interested to know that an experimental French fusion reactor has set a new duration record of 210 seconds. Most fusion reactor research works (or tries to) by containing and compressing a quantity of plasma via an electomagnetic field in a toroidial chamber. Fusion energy could potentially provide a a clean, efficient, and virtually inexhaustible source of energy, but fusion reactoins have proven difficult to contain and control, so this is a significant achievement."

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Re:Previous record? by sl956 · 2002-08-06 06:19 · Score: 4, Interesting

The article doesn't say. What was the previous record?
The same french tokamak (Tore Supra) had set the previous record of 120 seconds in 1996.
The figures on this page (in french) shows that the reactor produced 2MW during most of that 1996 experiment. That is 2MW of *excess* power for such a small experimental reactor!!!