What is nuclear fusion?
A long-hyped green technology is about to face its reality check
CULHAM, A VILLAGE near Oxford, in England, is home to just 500 people. It is, though, next door to the nearest thing on Earth to a “Silicon Valley” of nuclear fusion. What is happening there epitomises the shift of the search for controlled fusion power from governments to private enterprise. For, at the end of this year, the Joint European Torus (JET), a long-standing intergovernmental fusion project located in Culham, will shut up shop. Meanwhile, three firms which hope to use fusion to generate electricity at grid scale are breaking ground there (or are about to do so) for demonstration plants. Does the technology have commercial potential?
From the August 12th 2023 edition
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