The aim of researchers to bring nuclear fusion—the process that powers the stars—down to Earth has been bolstered after the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy’s Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) reactor maintained super-hot plasma within a magnetic field for 30 seconds.The achievement is a step forward in scientists’ desire to harness the fusion that occurs at the heart of the Sun, and then reproduce it on Earth in a controlled manner.Should they succeed, fusion power will provide the world with a safe, sustainable, environmentally responsible, and abundant source of energy.
Fusion is almost the reverse of nuclear fission (which powers the world’s nuclear reactors). Whereas fission consists of the breaking apart of heavy atoms such as uranium, fusion involves the smashing together of light atoms to make heavier atoms and energy.Fusion is a cleaner process as…