A research team in Germany recently achieved what it called "a world first in fusion research," exciting the clean energy community, Interesting Engineering reported.
The research team is part of the world's largest stellarator facility, Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X), where scientists have been hard at work developing a more efficient way to generate fusion energy. And now, they've finally achieved their goal, generating high-energy helium-3 ions for the first time.
Nuclear fusion is the process of using force to merge two atomic nuclei. The act of combining these nuclei results in a tremendous release of energy, which provides a great deal of power that can be used for everything from fuel alternatives to electricity on a commercial scale.
Fusion is a clean and naturally occurring means of energy generation; in fact, it's the primary type of power and reaction that creates the stars. And it doesn't generate polluting emissions the way other fuel sources do, appealing to climate advocates. Therefore, the more we can scale our usage of fusion, the cleaner and less overheated our planet's atmosphere will be.
For fusion to happen, the process must be made more efficient. Fusion occurs inside a superheated plasma, which is kept at multimillion-degree temperatures. Traditionally, this fusion results in high-energy "alpha particles" (helium-4 nuclei), but those particles can be prone to escape, which can cool the plasma and halt the entire process.
That's why the team focused on generating smaller, lower-energy particles, which could maintain the fusion process in a more manageable way. They did this using ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH).
As Interesting Engineering explained, ICRH entails sending electromagnetic waves into plasma at "the specific frequency at which helium-3 ions naturally orbit around the magnetic field lines" in order to help the particles absorb energy.
"This is similar to pushing a child on a swing: to be effective, each push must be precisely in tune with the swing's natural frequency — in other words, it must be in resonance," the scientists wrote in their press release. "This is the first time that high-energy helium-3 ions have been produced in a stellarator using ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH): a world first in fusion research."
Researchers highlighted how the findings will also help them better understand how the sun works, as these same resonance processes used at W7-X may occur in nature.
"These findings show that fusion science is not only shaping the future, but also helping to unlock the mysteries of the cosmos around us," the press release concluded.
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