ITER’s fusion energy experiments will take place inside the vacuum vessel of a donut-shaped machine called a tokamak.
The world has been trying to master this limitless clean energy source since the 1930s. We’re now closer than ever.
Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France — From a small hill in the southern French region of Provence, you can see two suns. One has been blazing for four-and-a-half billion years and is setting. The other is being built by thousands of human minds and hands, and is — far more slowly — rising. The last of the real sun’s evening rays cast a magical glow over the other — an enormous construction site that could solve the biggest existential crisis in human history.
It is here, in the tiny commune of Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, that 35 countries have come together to try and master nuclear fusion, a process that occurs naturally in the sun — and all stars — but is painfully difficult to replicate on Earth.
Fusion promises a virtually limitless form of energy that, unlike fossil fuels, emits zero greenhouse gases and, unlike the nuclear fission power used today, produces no long-life radioactive waste.
Mastering it could literally save humanity from climate change, a crisis of our own making.
Read the entire article posted May 30, 2022 online at cnn.com.
link submitted by Gene Savoy Jr.