Infinite energy is the aim of Japan and Europe

Fusion-energy quest makes big advance with US, Japan and Europe joined to produce infinite energy 

The inauguration of the world’s most powerful fusion machine brings the dream of clean, safe and abundant power closer. In the eastern Japanese city of Naka stands a six-storey-high tower that is far from being an ordinary building. The device inside the cylindrical steel structure is called a tokamak. It’s designed to hold swirling superheated gases called plasmas at up to 200 million degrees Celsius – more than 10 times hotter than the sun’s core. There has been an interest in the fourth state of matter, and the US, Japan and Europe have joined hands to work towards the stage of abundant power. Thanks to the partnership forged by Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory with Japan and Europe, a fusion machine was built to support all operations of ITER and to guide by providing research for all fusion power plants created after ITER. This operating tokamak, known as the JT-60SA, started as a mere experiment and has since evolved into the world’s largest fusion machine, said to produce energy enclosed at 100,000,000 ºC in the fourth state of matter.

Located northeast of Tokyo, the tokamak represents the next milestone in a decades-long international quest to make fusion energy a reality and reflects leading roles played by the EU and Japan. The Naka structure, known as JT-60SA, is the outcome of an EU-Japan agreement from 2007 to develop fusion energy. It’s the world’s most powerful tokamak and was inaugurated in December 2023 after almost a decade of construction. ‘JT-60SA coming into operation is a very important milestone,’ said Professor Ambrogio Fasoli, an Italian physics expert who leads a consortium which received EU funding to advance the prospects for commercial energy from fusion. The partnership brings together around 170 laboratories and industrial partners from 29 countries. The participants are contributing hardware and personnel to JT-60SA. Fusion-energy reactors like JT-60SA replicate processes which occur in the sun and other stars. By fusing hydrogen atoms to create helium and one neutron releasing energy in the form of heat, they have the potential to generate a safe, clean and almost inexhaustible source of power. Firstly, when it comes to fusing atoms, environments for maintaining must be so extreme since traditional sensors would end up melting. Superconducting magnets will provide the magnetic field required to confine the plasma, whilst operating continuously without losing energy. Scientists would need to ensure stability within the tokamak to prevent any other disruptions.

The JT-60SA is known for being an upgraded version of the JT-60U tokamak, or more fondly, the artificial sun, defying the laws of the universe. This upgraded tokamak enabled the optimization of the plasma’s shape. With the JT-60SA, the plasma created was more triangular in shape to improve confinement. Furthermore, this upgraded machine would be able to test different scenarios since it will operate in different divertor configurations. JT-60SA will inform work on the next planned tokamak: ITER, the world’s largest fusion experiment. Double the size of JT-60SA, ITER is being built on a 180-hectare site in southern France. F4E manages Europe’s contribution to ITER, which brings together 33 countries, as well as to JT-60SA, whose planned lifespan is around 20 years. With confirmation that JT-60SA’s core systems work, the reactor will enter a planned shutdown for two to three years while an external heating-power system is added and other ones are upgraded. ‘When we start the next operational phase, we will then be able to go a lot further with plasma production and understanding different configurations,’ said Phillips. While the JT-60SA had produced its very first plasma in late 2023, the mission of taking plasma production forward will be escalated in October 2026. This year will be the year of the full-scale experimental campaign after many years of research, experimenting and testing. Upgrades have been done over the years, with teams from Japan and Europe involved in the technical side of the project. These teams have installed heating systems and the ports deemed necessary to conduct experiments. This year will see the start of a series of plasma experiments with hydrogen isotopes being energized to produce high-temperature plasma as well. With such experiments on the cards, the idea is to:-

Test methods for high-pressure plasma.

Look at plasma behavior, particularly in future reactors like DEMO.

Provide data directly derived from the operation of the plasma project.

Now that the construction of the tokamak is complete, the next step would be to guide scientific discovery which could further shape energy systems.

European Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson took part in the inauguration of JT-60SA. The €600 million reactor was built jointly by an EU organisation called Fusion for Energy, or F4E, and Japan’s National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology, also known as QST. When it was declared active, JT-60SA claimed the title of largest tokamak from a 40-year-old facility in the UK called Joint European Torus, or JET. JT-60SA will feature up to 41 megawatts of heating power compared with 38 MW for JET. ‘We turned the machine on and it works,’ said Guy Phillips, head of unit for JT-60SA at F4E. ‘We managed to produce the biggest volume of plasma ever in such a device, which is a great achievement. But this was just the first step and we still have a lot of work to do.’ The system will be online in the latter part of 2026 for a series of first-round experiments. Thus far, the JT-60SA has been a fusion experiment in Naka, Japan. This fusion machine was designed and built under the supervision of the Broader Approach Agreement between Japan and Euratom. The idea behind this machine was to explore optimal conditions for the shape of the fourth state of matter, plasma. The experiment looked at using superconducting coils which could cool to zero fully, as well as shape plasma which was hotter than the sun. In the process, this tokamak project has broken records. The JT-60SA has attained the Guinness World Record for obtaining plasma volumes of 160 cubic meters. This is quite the record since all prior research attempts and all prior tokamak devices could not obtain such plasma volumes.

Fusion is the reverse of fission, the process at the heart of traditional nuclear power stations. While fission involves the division of a heavy atom into two light atoms, fusion combines two light atoms to form a larger one. Unlike fission, fusion produces no long-lived nuclear waste and presents no risk of a meltdown or chain reaction. Research into fusion began in the 1920s when a British astrophysicist named Arthur Eddington linked the energy of stars to the fusion of hydrogen into helium. A century later, as climate change intensifies and countries worldwide seek alternatives to fossil fuels which cause it, the lure of fusion is as strong as ever. But significant obstacles remain. They include the technical challenges of building reactors whose walls won’t melt from the extreme heat inside, finding the best mixes of materials for fusion production and limiting irradiation of materials inside the reactor. Continuity is a strong feature of fusion research. Before turning their attention to JT-60SA, EUROfusion researchers worked on JET. The facility broke its own record for the largest amount of energy produced by a fusion-energy reactor before the final experiments were carried out there and it was shut down in December 2023. Measuring 69 megajoules in a 5.2-second burst, the energy was estimated to be enough to power 12 000 homes. ‘The fusion energy record at JET is an incredibly strong reminder of how well we now master fusion reactions on Earth,’ said Fasoli.

Given the importance of know-how in the field, both EUROfusion and F4E run programmes to get future generations of scientists interested and trained in fusion. Two factors holding back interest in fusion by some young researchers are a lack of immediate results in the field and an indirect, as well as unjustified, stigma linked to nuclear fission, according to Fasoli. ‘This is a transgenerational effort,’ he said. ‘There’s a need for education, training and structures that can keep people who are interested.’ The fourth state of matter may spell infinite and unlimited energy once scientists figure out how to tame plasma properly. Thanks to the international collaboration between Europe, Japan and the US, the JT-60SA signifies how, with collaboration, scientific complexities can be overcome. This machine is ready to start its scientific journey in the latter part of 2026. For now, we can only assume that much valuable data will be gained from this project, and this data will assist with future fusion control systems. Furthermore, the knowledge accumulated by experimental attempts will support ITER too, and not just the JT-60SA. With the 100,000,000°C for plasma promise, the world is reimagining infinite energy. European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth Iliana Ivanova said at a March 2024 event with industry representatives that collaboration between private and public entities in the field of fusion is essential to accelerate the demonstration of fusion-electricity generation. The goal is to involve bigger industrial stakeholders as well as startups in the transition from laboratory to fabrication. This means combining the private sector’s entrepreneurship and industrial capability with the ambition and realism of the public sector, according to Fasoli. He said that fusion energy could become a reality by the 2050s. ‘As long as we all row in the same direction, I think that horizon is still reasonable,’ Fasoli said. ‘It means we need everybody to work together.’