Big tokamaks move toward power reactor status

The author states that, over the next two years, three large tokamak experiments will demonstrate for the first time the capacity for magnetic fusion energy generation, making the prospect for harnessing the unlimited energy potentials of nuclear fusion a reality. These machines will also reveal an entirely new physical regime for the first time, that of ignited and burning thermonuclear plasmas. The three devices - the Tokamak Fusion Test REactor (TFTR) at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in New Jersey, the Joint European Torus (JET) at Culham Laboratory in England, and the JT-60 at Tokai in Japan - will open the road to the realization of commercial magnetic fusion electric power plants. All three tokamaks will attain the physical conditions needed for energy breakeven; that is, the potential of producing more fusion energy than the energy consumed in the operation of the experiment. JET and TFTR have been designed to burn the most reactive fusion fuels (deuterium-tritium) and produce net energy. And major scientific advances in the past few years indicate that JET may be able to obtain full fusion ignition - a condition in which the fusion energy itself maintains the burning fuel at the hundred-million-degree Celsius fusion reaction temperature required to operate an economical commercial tokamak reactor. All three experiments will explore entirely new realms of plasma physics