“You can’t get a result like this in just one day”. These are the words of Bruno Gonçalves, a professor at Instituto Superior Técnico and president of the Institute for Plasmas and Nuclear Fusion (IPFN), regarding the data obtained from the Joint European Torus (JET), announced on February 8. In the latest JET experiments, energy production records were broken, with 69 megajoules produced in 5 seconds from 0.2 milligrams of fuel. In 2021, the reactor set the previous record of 59 megajoules.

Several IPFN researchers were involved in the initiative that is now ending after 40 years, with the decommissioning of JET. Multiple diagnostic methods used “had a strong contribution from Portuguese researchers”, explains Bruno Gonçalves. Elements such as microwave diagnostics, data acquisition systems for neutron and gamma-ray diagnostics and JET vertical stabilization were developed at IPFN.

Results such as these “are the result of years of input from several generations of researchers”, with the IPFN having been part of the EUROfusion consortium for over 30 years. Técnico, in particular, is Portugal’s representative in this consortium responsible for the experiments carried out at the British reactor. According to the president of IPFN, Portugal was once “the sixth most represented country [in this consortium] in JET campaigns”.

This is not the only unprecedented result in nuclear fusion at JET facilities in Culham, Oxfordshire. In October last year, the EUROfusion consortium announced the first observations of alpha heating at JET, the process by which the fusion reaction can keep its fuel hot.

This type of observation could be another step along the road to making nuclear fusion a viable process for obtaining energy – the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a reactor currently under construction in the south of France, “sees the JET research results as having essential implications”, according to a press release published by the EUROfusion consortium.