It’s an old joke that many fusion scientists have grown tired of hearing: Practical nuclear fusion power is just 30 years away—and always will be.
But now, that may no longer be true. New advances in magnet technology have enabled researchers at MIT to propose a new design for a practical compact tokamak fusion reactor—and it’s one that might be realized in as little as a decade, they say.
The new reactor uses coils of rare-earth barium copper oxide, a commercially available superconductor, to generate an extremely strong magnetic field. Introducing this material “just ripples through the whole design,” says Dennis Whyte, a professor of nuclear science and engineering and director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center. “It changes the whole thing.”
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