F U S IO N

T IM E L IN E
 1920s - The British astrophysicist Arthur Eddington suggested
that stars draw their energy from the fusion of hydrogen into
helium.
1930s - Scientists, particularly Hans Bethe, discovered that
nuclear fusion was possible and that it was the energy source
for the sun.
1934 - With his famous experiment Rutherford shows the
fusion of deuterium into helium and observed that “an
enormous effect was produced” during the process.
1950 - Soviet scientists Andrei Sakharov and Igor Tamm
proposed a design for a fusion reactor, they call it the Tokamak
1973, 1977 - The Europe Commission gives the green light to
build the JET fusion test reactor.
1997 - JET the first reactor to run on a fuel of a 50-50 mix of
tritium and deuterium breaks the fusion energy record by
creating 16 MWs from an input of 24MWs.
2005 - ITER Members unanimously agreed that ITER would be
built in Cadarache in France. ITER is a new testing fusion
reactor.
2021 - JET sets another record of 59 MJ of energy in a 5-second
burst while only burning 170 micrograms of deuterium and
tritium.
2022 - ITER is 77.7% complete towards the first plasma/test.
Monday, December 5, 2022 - Breakthrough in fusion, about two
megajoules (a unit of energy) went into the reaction and about
three megajoules came out at the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory.