Scientists in South Korea develop an 'artificial sun'

Scientists from Seoul National University and the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy have made a major breakthrough in their pursuit of clean nuclear energy by creating an 'artificial sun' at the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) reactor.  

The reactor reached temperatures upward of 100 million degree Celsius for 30 seconds. Comparatively, the core of the sun hits temperatures around 15 million degrees.

It is pertinent to note that nuclear fusion is considered the holy grail of energy and it is what powers our sun. It merges atomic nuclei to create massive amounts of energy, which is the opposite of the fission process used in atomic weapons and nuclear power plants, which splits them into fragments.

By mimicking the natural reaction of the sun, scientists are hoping that the technology may help humanity harness vast amounts of energy and help battle the energy crisis. 

“We usually say that fusion energy is a dream energy source – it is almost limitless, with low emission of greenhouse gases and no high-level radioactive waste – [but the latest breakthrough] means fusion is not a dream,” said Yoo Suk-jae, president, Korea Institute of Fusion Energy.

Unlike fission, fusion emits no greenhouse gases and carries less risk of accidents or the theft of atomic material. The scientists at KSTAR are not sitting on their laurels and have already put their sights on operating the reactor for five minutes or 300 seconds. 

“This is not the end of the story, we must move on to 300 seconds – 300 is the minimum time frame to demonstrate steady-state operations, then this plasma can work forever,”

However, this is not the first time that an artificial sun has been created in laboratories. As reported by WION, Chinese scientists have been working on developing smaller versions of the nuclear fusion reactor since 2006.

Reportedly, last year in December, the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) fusion energy reactor created an artificial sun, reaching temperatures of 70 million degrees Celsius for 1,056 seconds, which is five times hotter than the sun. 

Prior to that in May, the same reactor ran for 101 seconds at a temperature of 20 million degrees Celsius.