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    Nuclear fusion: WEST beats the world record for plasma duration!
    Futurology

    Nuclear fusion: WEST beats the world record for plasma duration!

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    1. Gari_305 on

      From the article

      >On 12 February, the CEA’s WEST machine was able to maintain a plasma for more than 22 minutes. In doing so, it smashed the previous record for plasma duration achieved with a tokamak. This leap forward demonstrates how our knowledge of plasmas and technological control of them over longer periods is becoming more mature, and offers hope that fusion plasmas can be stabilised for greater amounts of time in machines such as ITER.

    3. DaniValkyrie on

      >**1,337 seconds: that was how long WEST, a tokamak run from the CEA Cadarache site**

      I’m a millennial but I feel like a boomer knowing what 1337 is

    4. NinjaLanternShark on

      For those like me who didn’t know, CEA is a French research institute and WEST is in France.

    5. DocHolidayPhD on

      I keep hearing new records being broken in this regard, but what is the target that they are looking to achieve before it is considered “viable”? If it runs for an hour, is it time to build a bunch of them and run them 24 hours a day on staggered shifts? Or do we need one that’s running for a year straight without shutting down before we consider this viable?

    6. alkrk on

      “I did it! Kept the egg straight up for 22 minutes!”
      SMH. This ain’t pragmatic. Let’s keep our old one going.