Korea's New Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough Maintains 100 Million°C for 30 Seconds! Here's How It Was Achieved

Korea achieved a new nuclear fusion breakthrough after an experiment reached around 100 million degrees Celsius.

Another thing that makes this very interesting is that the very high temperature was maintained for 30 seconds.

As of writing, the actual nuclear fusion is not yet achievable. But, many experts claim that this energy source will soon be available.

Now, with the latest achievement of South Korean researchers at the Seoul National University, the world is another step closer to creating real nuclear fusion.

Korea's New Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough

According to NewScientist's latest report, Yong-Su Na, a Seoul National University professor, said they finally succeeded in creating a very high-temperature reaction.

He and his colleagues believed their nuclear fusion breakthrough would help create a viable nuclear fusion reactor.

They achieved this using the so-called ITB (internal transport barrier), a modified technique that can create higher pressure near the center of the plasma.

Na said that their strategy allowed them to drastically increase the temperature of the plasma's core while maintaining the matter's outer layer at a cool temperature.

He added that having low density allowed them to achieve a stable reaction. Aside from this, the professor further explained that they also relied on the so-called FIRE (fast-ion-regulated enhancement).

"It's definitely exciting, but there's a big uncertainty about how well our understanding of the physics scales to larger devices. So something like ITER is going to be much bigger than KSTAR," said Dominic Power at Imperial College London.

Other Nuclear Fusion Breakthroughs

Aside from the 100 million degrees Celsius achievement of South Korea, Science Alert reported that some experts achieved self-sustaining nuclear fusion.

Californian scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility claimed their 2021 experiment created a self-sustaining fusion reaction.

They added that this was achieved in the intense environment generated by inwardly directed shock waves.

As of press time, these are just some of the efforts made by various scientists to achieve real nuclear fusion. But, it will still take years before this can happen.

Meanwhile, the nuclear competition between NASA and China recently concerned experts.

On the other hand, Samsung C&T decided to invest millions of dollars in small nuclear power plants.

For more news updates about nuclear fusion and other similar energy stories, keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

TechTimes own this article

Written by: Griffin Davis