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<h2 class="story"><span class="story-title" id="title-87814191"><a
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href="https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/12/10/0123221/star-in-a-jar-fusion-reactor-works-promises-infinite-energy">'Star
In a Jar' Fusion Reactor Works, Promises Infinite Energy</a>
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http://www.space.com/34960-star-in-a-jar-fusion-reactor-works.html"
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target="_blank"> (space.com) </a></span></span>
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class="story-byline"> Posted by <a
href="https://twitter.com/BeauHD" rel="nofollow">BeauHD</a>
<time id="fhtime-87814191" datetime="on Saturday December 10,
2016 @02:00AM">on Saturday December 10, 2016 @02:00AM</time>
from the <span class="dept-text">nothing-lasts-forever</span>
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<div class="p" id="text-87814191"> An anonymous reader quotes a
report from Space.com: <i>For several decades now, scientists
from around the world have been pursuing a ridiculously
ambitious goal: They hope to develop a nuclear fusion reactor
that would generate energy in the same manner as the sun and
other stars, but down here on Earth. Incorporated into
terrestrial power plants, this "<a
href="http://www.space.com/34960-star-in-a-jar-fusion-reactor-works.html">star
in a jar" technology would essentially provide Earth with
limitless clean energy, forever</a>. And according to new
reports out of Europe this week, we just took another big step
toward making it happen. In a study <a
href="http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13493">published
in the latest edition of the journal Nature Communications</a>,
researchers confirmed that Germany's <a
href="http://www.ipp.mpg.de/w7x">Wendelstein 7-X</a> (W7-X)
fusion energy device is on track and working as planned. The
space-age system, known as a stellerator, generated its first
batch of hydrogen plasma when it was <a
href="http://www.seeker.com/fusion-reactor-spits-out-first-hydrogen-plasma-1770849413.html">first
fired up earlier this year</a>. The new tests basically give
scientists the green light to proceed to the next stage of the
process. It works like this: Unlike a traditional fission
reactor, which splits atoms of heavy elements to generate
energy, a fusion reactor works by fusing the nuclei of lighter
atoms into heavier atoms. The process releases massive amounts
of energy and produces no radioactive waste. The "fuel" used
in a fusion reactor is simple hydrogen, which can be extracted
from water. The W7-X device confines the plasma within
magnetic fields generated by superconducting coils cooled down
to near absolute zero. The plasma -- at temperatures upwards
of 80 million degrees Celsius -- never comes into contact with
the walls of the containment chamber. Neat trick, that. <a
href="http://www.pppl.gov/people/david-gates">David Gates</a>,
principal research physicist for the advanced projects
division of PPPL, leads the agency's collaborative efforts in
regard to the W7-X project. In an email exchange from his
offices at Princeton, Gates said the latest tests verify that
the W7-X magnetic "cage" is working as planned. "This lays the
groundwork for the exciting high-performance plasma operations
expected in the near future," Gates said.</i><br>
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