Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research Sets Record, 7x Hotter Than the Sun

The Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) has broken its own record, again. This time, the fusion reactor managed to keep things as hot as 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million degrees Fahrenheit) for a whopping 48 seconds. That’s seven times hotter than the sun’s core.

Fusion, the process that powers stars, is what they’re trying to mimic here on Earth. But doing it here requires temperatures far hotter than what the sun’s core churns out, mainly because we don’t have gravity to help squeeze everything together. So, to make it work, the KSTAR reactor, which is shaped like a giant donut, has to heat things up to 100 million degrees Celsius.

This isn’t KSTAR’s first rodeo with extreme heat. Back in 2018, it hit the 100 million degrees Celsius mark, but only for a brief 1.5 seconds. Since then, they’ve been improving slowly but surely, hitting 8 seconds in 2019, 20 seconds in 2020, and 30 seconds in 2021. Now, with some fancy upgrades like a new tungsten divertor, they’ve smashed their own record, keeping things toasty for almost a whole minute.

Ultimately, the team is shooting for 300 seconds of burning plasma by 2026. That’s five minutes of sustained fusion, which would be a massive leap forward in our quest for clean, limitless energy.

But KSTAR isn’t just a hot science project. It’s a crucial step toward reactors like ITER and DEMO, which could one day power entire cities without emitting greenhouse gases. ITER, set to fire up next year, promises to give us 10 times more energy than it consumes. And DEMO, its big brother, aims to actually generate electricity while producing 25 times more energy than it guzzles.

So, while fusion might still seem like science fiction, every leap forward at places like the KSTAR Research Center brings us closer to a brighter, cleaner future. And with DEMO’s construction slated to start soon, it might not be long before we’re all living in a world powered by miniature suns.