In March 2022, the Chinese government announced that its EAST reactor operated for 17 minutes at more than 70 million degrees Celsius, a temperature higher than that of the sun.
This experiment has an investment of billions of dollars, but there is still a long way to go to apply the results of the experiment industrially, we are far from using this technology to light a light bulb or an electrical appliance.
Nuclear fusion technology is different from nuclear fission technology, let's look at some small features.
Nuclear fission, which is the technology used in nuclear power plants, the atoms split causing great energy, but it is dangerous because they can explode as happened in Fukushima and Chernobyl, and also contaminate the environment, so humanity is exploring nuclear fusion.
Nuclear fusion is more environmentally friendly and consists of the union of atoms this technology is more stable so far but is still in the research phase, so humanity is betting the future of electric power to nuclear fusion and all countries are looking to win this race.
In England, a nuclear fusion power plant will be built and it will be called STEP and is expected to produce electricity by 2040.
In France, the ITER nuclear fusion power plant is already being built in conjunction with the European Union and the United States and it is already the 5th most expensive project in history after the Apollo missions and the International Space Station, the ITER will cost 24 billion euros.
It is expected that this technology will be the one that supplies electricity to humanity in the future but it is very complicated, the EAST experiments in China have achieved a lot by reaching temperatures of 150 million degrees Celsius, that is what heats 10 suns but only manage to last a few seconds.
I believe that if there is so much effort in this is because somehow someday they will manage to understand the concepts and create a power plant based on this technology of nuclear fusion, which is a cleaner energy so the future of humanity seems promising.
