Thanks to Sam for sharing an article from the Science Alert website about a team of researchers at the University of Washington who have been testing new approaches to achieving fusion energy on a smaller scale than the large hot Tokamak approaches that have proved to be very challenging.
From the article:
Using a mix of 20 percent deuterium and 80 percent hydrogen, the team managed to hold stable a 50 centimetre (1.6 foot) long column of plasma enough to achieve fusion, evidenced by a signature generation of neutrons being emitted.
The team has published an article about their work in the American Physical Society’s Physical Review Letters titled “Sustained Neutron Production from a Sheared-Flow Stabilized Z inch”
Here is the abstract:
The sheared-flow stabilized Z pinch has demonstrated long-lived plasmas with fusion-relevant parameters. We present the first experimental results demonstrating sustained, quasi-steady-state neutron production from the fusion Z-pinch experiment, operated with a mixture of 20% deuterium/80% hydrogen by pressure. Neutron emissions lasting approximately 5 μs are reproducibly observed with pinch currents of approximately 200 kA during an approximately 16 μs period of plasma quiescence. The average neutron yield is estimated to be (1.25±0.45)×105 neutrons/pulse and scales with the square of the deuterium concentration. Coincident with the neutron signal, plasma temperatures of 1–2 keV and densities of approximately 1017 cm−3 with 0.3 cm pinch radii are measured with fully integrated diagnostics.
