JET Fusion Experiment: The Hottest Place in the Solar System.

Fusion is the process that powers stars. At UKAEA we are trying to re-create this process to harness this clean and sustainable energy from nuclear fusion to one day power our homes.

This is from one of the fusion experiments for the Joint European Torus (JET). Based at the Culham Science Centre in Oxfordshire, UKAEA operates and maintains this incredible fusion energy machine. When running JET can reach temperatures up to 150 million degrees – 10x hotter than the Sun’s core!

This particular experiment shows what a typical "pulse" looks like inside JET. Code-named experiment JPN 91471, this was recorded in August 2016 and tested how the fusion plasma [a super-heated gas & the fourth state of matter] behaved inside JET under low power conditions. We test both L-mode (low power) and H-mode (high power) plasma conditions to better understand the science and physics behind fusion energy, and what it will take for us to run fusion power stations at full power in the future.

All the work on JET is carried out at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) by researchers as part of the EUROfusion consortium. If you would like to know more about the research at CCFE, you can visit our website here: http://www.ccfe.ac.uk/Research.aspx