Reaching durations such as these is a crucial milestone for machines like ITER, which will need to maintain fusion plasmas for several minutes. The end goal is to control the plasma, which is ...

One of the key factors in the fusion reaction is temperature. Devices like ITER will need to heat the plasma up to 150 million °C –ten times hotter than the core of the Sun – and keep it burning. To ...

Scientists and engineers from eight nations have carried out a project using lasers on the Joint European Torus (JET) to study fusion fuel retention. Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS), an ...