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New Zealand enters race for nuclear fusion with unique approach
- OpenStar technologies reaches a milestone in the development of nuclear fusion by creating the first plasma in New Zealand's history.
- New Zealand-based OpenStar has developed a levitated dipole which they believe is a better design for nuclear fusion than common fusion device designs like Tokamaks or Stellarators.
- The dipole approach uses a magnetic field to redirect the energy of the plasma into a curved path, and leverage a planet magnetosphere as its core inspiration.
- OpenStar's dipole machine uses high-temperature superconductors (HTS) to build their magnets, taking advantage of a younger field with fewer machines built worldwide.
- HTS magnets have the potential to produce magnetic fields of about 20 Tesla (T). The current prototype hasn't hit that strength yet. In 2022, Chinese researchers created the world's strongest steady-state magnet which had a strength of 45.22 T. The Earth's magnetic field is about a million times weaker than these.
- The operating temperature for OpenStar's superconductor is 90 Kelvin (–183°C), however the colder you make them, the better they perform.
- Ratu Mataira, OpenStar's founder and CEO, is hopeful OpenStar's technology will help tackle society's energy challenges.
- Mataira stated that he believes a reactor capable of producing electricity will hopefully be created sometime in the 2030s.
- OpenStar's machine ran 5 shots lasting 5–20 seconds in their first experiment. Mataira claims there is nothing about the plasma physics that actually limits the pulse length available.
- The first step toward a nuclear fusion reactor has been made, but there is much work to be done to refine this technology, whichrequires temperatures of more than 100 million degrees Celsius to create.
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