This year, KSTAR tackled some of these challenges by overcoming one of its plasma operation modes, the Internal Transport Barrier (ITB).
Director Si-Woo Yoon of the KSTAR Research Center at the KFE said: “The technologies required for long operations of 100 million- plasma are the key to the realization of fusion energy, and the KSTAR’s success in maintaining the high-temperature plasma for 20 seconds will be an important turning point in the race for securing the technologies for the long high-performance plasma operation, a critical component of a commercial nuclear fusion reactor in the future.”
Yong-Su Na, professor at the Department of Nuclear Engineering, SNU, said: “The success of the KSTAR experiment in the long, high-temperature operation by overcoming some drawbacks of the ITB modes brings us a step closer to the development of technologies for the realisation of nuclear fusion energy.”
The KSTAR began operating last August and has conducted a total of 110 plasma experiments.
The results will be presented at the IAEA Fusion Energy Conference in May next year.