Progress on nuclear fusion, which attempts to produce energy in the same way as the sun, made some important headway this year.
The world’s biggest nuclear fusion power project, ITER in southern France, began its “assembly phase” on 28 July. The milestone was welcomed by world leaders, including the then Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, who said it will help bring about a “sustainable, carbon-free society”.
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But that green society is still a way off. Assembly is scheduled to take around four more years, followed by two decades of experiments. ITER’s commercial fusion power plant isn’t expected until 2054.
Smaller fusion projects had mixed fortunes. There had been plans for the Joint European Torus, a European project at Culham in Oxfordshire, UK, to run the first fusion test of its kind since 1997, using the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium. The experiment was delayed from November 2020 until May to August next year as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
However, a separate, newly built tokamak – the chamber where fusion reactions take place – tested its first plasma at Culham on 29 October, and on 2 December, the UK Atomic Energy Authority launched a search for a site to build the world’s first prototype nuclear fusion power station by 2040.
