Korea's Fusion Reactor Ran 7 Times Hotter Than The Sun For Almost 30 Seconds

Science Alert ^ | 9/9/2022 | AVID NIELD

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Korea's 'artificial Sun' reactor has made headlines this week by officially sustaining plasma at a temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius for more than 20 seconds.

The team at the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) device reached an ion temperature of above 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million degrees Fahrenheit).

According to New Scientist, the reaction was only stopped after 30 seconds because of hardware limitations.

KSTAR uses magnetic fields to generate and stabilize ultra-hot plasma, with the ultimate aim of making nuclear fusion power a reality.

You can see the footage below showing the reactor run over 24 seconds, and achieving a temperature of more than 10^8 Kelvin – which is more or less equivalent to 100 million degrees Celsius.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Amazing news. Now...can the experiment be reproduced? We'll see.

[imabadboy99]

Amazingly.... fueled by Obama’s hot air.

[oldernittany]

What could possibly go wrong?

[KnightAstronomer1]

That’s some spicy kimchi

[BBQToadRibs2]

Put another shrimp on the barbi.

[butlerweave]

It’s hotter than hell

[MtnClimber]

The greenies will find something wrong with it.

[Larry Lucido]

You could make a lot of s’mores over that.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

LOLOL..."10⁸ Kelvin – which is more or less equivalent to 100 million degrees Celsius"

Off by 273.15 degrees. 273.15 out of 100,000,000...I guess we can accept that rounding error. What's the accuracy of the 100 million measurement in the first place? 10%? 20%?

Just because you have a calculator that can give you 12 decimal points of precision doesn't mean you should pretend that a 12 decimal point number is valid or useful.

[Larry Lucido]

“It’s hotter than hell”

Good. Now freeze it and the Lions might win the Superbowl.

[Leaning Right]

Well, that’s just great. Just yesterday I got the fusion reactor in my basement to run at a temperature of 100 million C for 9 seconds. And already my record has been broken.

Here I am with my reactor. I think I’m going to tear it down and go back to gardening as a hobby.

[blackdog]

"Hardware Limitations"

Paid spokesperson talk for "Could have killed us all and Bob had to turn it off".

[Brooklyn Attitude]

So they briefly re-created summer in Texas.

[fidelis]

The Sun sees this and says, “Oh yeah?...

[Lazamataz]

Great! Now we are only 20 years away from fusion power!

[Red Badger]

Ping!..............

[fidelis]

Big whoop. I live in Phoenix and that’s like an average July day around here.

[Savage Beast]

How can nuclear fusion work in a laboratory inasmuch as it is enormous gravity, unproduceable here on earth, that produces it in the sun?

[Red Badger]

[Still Thinking]

7 seconds? Impressive if true. But...being the Norks, it’s probably Professor Kim’s Home Fusion Kit, where the plastic temp gauge has a printed paper sticker on the front with the needle permanently pegged all the way to the right.