European researchers have achieved a major success with a new energy record in experiments of the DTE3 campaign, which ran from August to October 2023 at the Joint European Torus (JET) in Culham, United Kingdom. This was announced on February 8, 2024 at a press event in Culham attended by Ambrogio Fasoli (EUROfusion Program Manager), Ian Chapman (UKAEA CEO) and other scientists involved in the experiments.
DTE3 is the third campaign in which experiments were carried out with deuterium and tritium (DT). This fuel mixture will also be used in future fusion plants, so experiments of this kind are of great importance.
The energy record of 59 megajoules achieved during the second campaign of this kind in December 2021 caused a sensation. This record has now been broken. On October 3, 2023, the researchers succeeded in consistently producing high fusion power with a pulse for 5.2 seconds. This generated 69 megajoules of energy while using just 0.2 milligrams of fuel.
The new world record is a significant milestone in itself. However, the experiments also demonstrated that the routine generation of reliable fusion plasmas is feasible.
However, the original aim of the experiments in the DTE3 campaign was not to set a new record. One focus was to test various operating scenarios that could be used to structure and control the hot plasma. One of these scenarios is based on the findings of Austrian researchers. In 2022, a team led by Prof. Dr. Friedrich Aumayr, Dipl-Ing. Lidija Radovanovic and Dr. Georg Harrer from the Vienna University of Technology and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching, demonstrated a new operating regime, the so-called QCE scenario, on the medium-sized fusion machine ASDEX Upgrade. With this scenario, destructive plasma instabilities at the plasma edge can be avoided. These plasma instabilities are one of the biggest problems for future fusion power plants, as they can severely damage the wall of a fusion reactor.
This regime has now also been tested at JET and thus for the first time on a larger machine and with the deuterium-tritium fuel relevant for future plants.
The demonstration of the QCE scenario with DT is of crucial importance, as after the decommissioning of JET the possibility of testing with reactor-relevant DT fuel will no longer be available until ITER is commissioned. Due to the success of the experiments, it is to be expected that this scenario will also be feasible in future, even larger reactors such as ITER and DEMO.
Following the successful completion of the DTE3 campaign, JET ceased plasma operations at the end of December 2023. For a long time, JET was one of the largest and most powerful fusion facilities in the world and has played a central role in accelerating the development of fusion energy. The tokamak is located on the UKAEA campus in Culham. Since its inception in 1983, JET has been used by more than 31 European laboratories under the management of the EUROfusion consortium. In June 2023, the facility celebrated its 40th anniversary.
But even after decommissioning, JET will continue to play an important role. It is the first time that a large tokamak with tritium handling and activated materials will be decommissioned. The techniques developed here will be of great benefit to the design of future facilities.
Further information:
ÖAW-Interview with Friedrich Aumayr (Head of Research of the Austrian fusion research program)