A major new site dedicated to nuclear fusion is now under construction in the United Kingdom, according to the BBC. But this time, it's not an experimental reactor: instead, it will aim to store and recover one of the main fuels for these reactions that may one day give us access to virtually inexhaustible energy.
To produce energy, the goal of a fusion reactor is to create conditions where different atoms are likely to collide at very high speeds. The impact then transforms their structure at the smallest scale to allow them to fuse, producing a large amount of energy in the process.
Today, the vast majority of experimental magnetic confinement reactors (tokamaks like ITER and stellarators) rely on a duo of atoms derived from hydrogen, deuterium and tritium, or "D-T pair." Together, they fuse to form an unstable helium atom, with an extra neutron. The latter is then ejected with gigantic energy, and the challenge will be to successfully harness these particles to produce electricity in astronomical quantities.
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Lithium recycling, a major challenge
One of the advantages of this approach is that it is theoretically possible to make the fusion reaction self-sufficient in tritium. To achieve this, the internal walls of the reaction chamber are covered with modules charged with lithium. The latter can absorb our famous neutron, and transform into an additional tritium atom and helium atom. In theory, this tritium could be extracted and reinjected into the system to reduce its net consumption to zero. In this case, the reactor operators would no longer need to worry about this reagent. This is where the H3AT comes in, the nerve center of the new site currently being built on the Culham campus in Oxfordshire. It is already a highly respected institution in the field of fusion. Until recently, it notably housed the JET, a recently retired experimental tokamak that contributed greatly to the development of ITER and its ilk.
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The H3AT, even though it is not intended to generate energy, could also become a valuable resource for the Cadarache reactor. Indeed, it will act as an experimental platform for developing advanced tritium processing technologies. Its objective will be to test different storage and purification techniques for this reagent, so that it can be put back into circulation as efficiently as possible after its extraction from the reactors.
This is a particularly important point on the road that will perhaps lead us to commercial fusion. Even if the engineers at ITER and other cutting-edge laboratories one day succeed in taming the mechanisms of nuclear fusion, they will only have solved the first part of the problem. For it to reach its immense potential, it will then be necessary to establish a solid and sustainable supply chain, otherwise it will remain a niche technology that will not necessarily benefit the greatest number of people. The H3AT is therefore the type of facility that will play a decisive role in the evolution of this technology.
One more step on a long road
However, we will have to wait before seeing it in action. Construction is scheduled to be completed in 2028, but as is often the case in the field of fusion, the immense complexity of this work can be expected to lead to substantial delays.
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Despite everything, this shows that the United Kingdom is well on its way to becoming one of the future fusion leaders, alongside France. As a reminder, in addition to hosting the ITER construction site, our WEST tokamak also achieved a sensational record last month.
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All that remains is to hope that we will one day manage to tame this profoundly revolutionary technology.
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