THERMONUCLEAR FUSION POWER

In recent years, significant advances have been made towards the harnessing of thermonuclear fusion for commercial power generation. In 1991, for the first time, fusion power in the megawatt range was produced in the Joint European Torus (JET) tokamak at Culham near Oxford. After further development of the machine, it is predicted that, in the next two years, power levels oi tens of megawatts will be achieved. It is planned that JET will be followed by the international Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), also a tokamak, which is a collaborative venture financed equally by the European Community, Japan, Russia, and the USA. Detailed design work is under way, with operation programmed to start in 2005. This machine should be capable oi producing at least 1 GW of fusion power. In this paper a brief overview of the current situation is presented, and NNC's recent and current involvement is described.