South Korea's artificial sun shines at 100 mn degrees for 20 seconds, sets new record

The Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) or Korean artificial sun has set a new world record for successfully maintaining high-temperature plasma for 20 seconds with an ion temperature over 100 million degrees (Celcius). 

The Korea Institute of Fusion Energy achieved the milestone in joint research with Seoul National University and New York’s Columbia University which was successful in the continuous operation of plasma for 20 seconds in such a high temperature which is also one of the key conditions of nuclear fusion in the 2020 KSTAR Plasma Campaign, as reported by Phys.Org.

Just last month, KSTAR or Korea's artificial sun lit up for the highest amount of time that the plasma operation could continue. Last year, the plasma operation had lasted for only eight seconds and ended up doubling the time span in 2020. Further, two years ago the KSTAR reached the plasma ion temperature of 100 million degrees for the very first tome and retention was reportedly only 1.5 seconds. 

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How do scientists create fusion reactions?

In order to re-create the fusion reactions that take place in the sun on Earth, hydrogen isotopes are placed inside the fusion device such as the one developed by the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy. The KSTAR is created with a plasma state where the ions and electrons are separated, and ions are required to be heated and maintained at high temperatures. 

While Korean artificial sun created the record, there have reportedly only been handful fusion devices that have briefly managed plasma at temperatures of 100 million degrees or higher.

However, not one of them broke the barrier of maintaining the operation for 10 seconds or more. It is the operational limit of the normal-conducting device and it was reportedly a challenge to maintain a stable plasma state in the fusion device at such high temperatures for a prolonged period of time. 

But, KSTAR this year improved the performance of the Internal Transport Barrier (ITB) mode which is high-end plasma operation mode developed in 2019 and became successful in keeping the plasma state for a long period of time and overcome the existing limits of the exceptionally high-temperature plasma operation.

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