The world’s largest thermonuclear reactor received its first plasma. This is the JT-60SA installation, created to assist in the development of thermonuclear technologies for the international ITER project. The height of the JT-60SA working chamber is only half the height of the ITER reactor chamber; This makes the experiments at the Japanese reactor very valuable in approaching the success of the international project.

The JT-60SA fusion reactor was rebuilt on the site of the old JT-60 reactor. It has grown and replaced magnets with superconducting ones. This will allow it to contain plasma in the world’s largest workspace volume of 135 m2³. We state that the volume of the working room in the ITER reactor will be 840 m2.³.

Experts servicing the JT-60SA reactor have not yet reported the parameters of the plasma obtained in the reactor. Ideally, its temperature (we are talking about electronic plasma, of course) should reach 200 million °C. In this case, the temperature of the ion plasma must reach 100 million °C for the thermonuclear reaction to begin. In this case, the JT-60SA reactor must maintain operation for 100 seconds.

Obtaining the first plasma in the JT-60SA reactor as a scaled-down copy of the ITER reactor testifies to the correct choice of design and strategy of the international project. The JT-60SA reactor has already helped ITER specialists, although it cost a lot of blood. During the JT-60SA test launch in 2021, a short circuit occurred in the coil of one of the superconducting magnets, which delayed the start of the installation by almost three years. The long and expensive repair of JT-60SA forced ITER engineers to solve existing problems, as well as pay more attention to the reactor magnets.

Experiments on the JT-60SA will allow for better preparation for the launch of the reactor in France. In the following stages, these reactors will be separated. While the Japanese reactor can run only on deuterium fuel, the ITER reactor will eventually be able to switch to the more efficient deuterium-tritium fuel. However, experiments on JT-60SA will allow the Japanese to develop their own thermonuclear power plants (DEMO project, which they plan to build by 2050). So far, the course of the industry is being set by the Chinese, whose experienced thermonuclear reactors heat plasma to temperatures of over 100 million°C for hundreds of seconds.