Japan inaugurates world’s largest nuclear fusion reactor

The world’s largest nuclear fusion reactor was inaugurated in Japan on the first of December, marking a great leap forward towards “net energy gain”.

Furthermore, the reactor is called JT-60SA and is located in the city of Naka, north of Tokyo.

The project is a joint venture between the European Union and Japan, and cost about £500 million (€583 million) to construct, according to the Daily Mail.

The reactor measures 50 feet in height and 40 feet in diameter, while its construction started in 2009.

JT-60SA is capable of heating hydrogen gas within its doughnut-shaped tokamak up to a staggering 200 million degrees Celsius, turning it into plasma.

Operating at these temperatures, nuclear fusion of hydrogen atoms can be achieved. This basically means that two hydrogen atoms can merge, producing a helium atom, a great amount of energy, and spare neutrons.

Nuclear fusion is different from nuclear fission, which is what is used today, in many ways.

Fusion merges atoms to produce energy, while fission splits them. Fusion also produces significantly less radioactive waste than fission, while it doesn’t carry risks of catastrophic nuclear accidents.

What is really remarkable about nuclear fusion is that it produces a “net energy gain”, which means that the process produces a greater amount of energy than what was used as input.

The first time net energy gain was achieved was about a year ago in California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, at the National Ignition Facility.

JT-60SA’s deputy project manager, Sam Davis, stated during the inaugural ceremony that the project was the result of a collaboration between more than 500 scientists and engineers, as well as more than 70 companies in Europe and Japan.

The reactor is expected to take roughly two years to reach its needed state of long-lasting plasma, while it is mostly going to be used for scientific research.

Finally, the project is a predecessor to the French ITER project, which is going to claim the title of the world’s largest nuclear fusion reactor upon completion.