Scientists in South Korea have taken a new step toward turning star power into a practical energy source. Their KSTAR device, often called an artificial Sun, has held a cloud of super hot plasma at about 100 million degrees Celsius for 48 seconds and kept a high performance state going for more than 100 seconds after a major upgrade to its inner wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On paper that may not sound like much time. In fusion research<\/a>, though, holding star-like heat for nearly a minute without destroying the machine is a big deal, especially when the goal is to build reactors that can one day feed clean electricity into homes and help bring down power bills and emissions at the same time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In Europe, a related device known as WEST<\/a> has already kept a slightly cooler plasma going for about six minutes in a fully tungsten lined chamber, showing that long runs in these extreme conditions are starting to look realistic instead of sci-fi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n KSTAR is a doughnut-shaped fusion device operated by the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy<\/a> in Daejeon, with support from the National Research Council of Science and Technology<\/a>. Officials there report that during its most recent campaign, the machine sustained an ion temperature of roughly 100 million degrees Celsius for 48 seconds and maintained a high confinement mode, a favored operating regime for power plants, for 102 seconds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those numbers matter because fusion on Earth needs higher temperatures than the real Sun. Our star fuses hydrogen at about 15 million degrees thanks to crushing gravity, while the thin plasma in a reactor has far lower density, so the particles must move much faster before they can collide and fuse. KSTAR\u2019s team is now pushing toward a target of 300 seconds at similar temperatures in the second half of this decade, which would bring experiments closer to what a future power plant needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat KSTAR just proved<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n