Three Ways to Make a Star on Earth

Massive magnets to confine plasma

This year, construction will begin on the 35-nation megaproject ITER, located in France. A doughnut-shaped, powerplant-size reactor, ITER will contain a fusion reaction within a magnetic ﬁeld and siphon oﬀ energy through its metal walls. Scientists hope to have a test-scale reaction running within the next decade.

A reflective wall in a compact reactor

In Lockheed’s design, a row of magnetic coils create a reﬂective wall to contain the plasma. The company’s small-scale reactor allows scientists to tweak experimental setups more nimbly than they can with a reactor the size of ITER. Lockheed says it has already ﬁred up its reactor 200 times but won’t release any data—so whether those attempts were successful remains to be seen. If they were, well, we may all be driving literal Ford Fusions before long.

A micro-explosion ignited by lasers

At the National Ignition Facility, scientists approach fusion diﬀerently. They ﬁre dozens of lasers at a BB-size bead of solid deuterium and tritium. In a billionth of a second, the hydrogen-based fuel collapses into a dense plasma and bursts into a puﬀ of energy. Last year, scientists produced the ﬁrst-ever net positive fusion reaction, meaning they got slightly more energy out of the plasma than they put in.

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