Scientists developing a compact version of a nuclear fusion reactor have shown a series of research papers that it should work, renewing hopes that the long-elusive goal of mimicking the way sun produces energy might be achieved and eventually contribute to the fight against climate change. Construction of a reactor, called SPARC, which is being developed by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a spinoff company, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, is expected to begin next spring and take three or four years. The company said construction would be followed by testing and, if successful, building of a power plant that could use fusion energy to generate electricity, beginning in the next decade. The ambitious timetable is far faster than that of the world’s largest fusion-power project, a multinational effort in Southern France called ITER (International Experimental Thermonuclear Reactor. That reactor has been under construction since 2013 and, although it is not designed to generate electricity, is expected to produce a fusion reaction by 2035. Fusion, in which lightweight atoms are brought together at temperature of tens of million of degrees to release energy, has been held out as a way for the world to address the climate-change implications of electricity production.
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