Photo Gallery Experiments in Fusion
The "Asdex Upgrade" reactor, at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching, near Munich, uses microwave components to heat plasma to 100 million degrees Celsius -- several times the heat of the sun.
But the plasma inside the donut-shaped Asdex reactor (pictured) is still unstable. A consortium of governments will start building a much larger reactor, known by its project initials "ITER," in 2009.
Then the chief breakthrough -- keeping plasma stable -- will then be feasible, says Dr. Günther Hasinger at the Max Planck Institute in Garching. "With a kind of 'Apollo Program' for nuclear fusion we could have built a reactor for commercial-scale production by the turn of the millennium," he argues. "All we needed was the money to build a big enough machine."
Another experimental reactor, called the "Stellarator," will use precision-shaped coils to keep its plasma stable. It's being developed by the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald, also in Germany. "The welders are genuine artists," says Thomas Klinger, the project manager. "What they have created here is a kind of 'Mona Lisa' in the world of welding."
