European researchers have brought the prospect of virtually limitless nuclear energy closer to reality by breaking the fusion power record by nearly a factor of three at the U.K.'s Joint European Torus facility near Oxford, England.

Generating 59 megajoules of sustained energy—averaging 11 MW over five seconds—confirms the line of development now in process at the world's largest fusion research project, called ITER, that is现在在法国建造, program researchers claim.

The EUROfusion team at the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority’s JET facility beat the previous record of 22 megajoules reached there in 1997.

A joint effort of 35 countries, ITER is a vast and intricate complex that will merge isotopes of hydrogen in a plasma at around 150 million° C to create net energy. The plasma is contained by strong magnetic fields within a toroidal magnetic chamber called a Tokamak.

如果一切按计划进行，则该工厂将在2035年全力，产生500兆瓦的输入能量。ITER是该项目原始名称，国际热核实验反应堆的首字母缩写。

The new record takes "a huge step closer to conquering one of the biggest scientific and engineering challenges of them all," says Ian Chapman, the U.K. authority's CEO.

"More importantly, the things we’ve learned about fusion under these conditions and how they fully confirm our predictions, show that we are on the right path to a future world of fusion energy," added Tony Donné, program manager at EUROfusion, which includes research bodies from the European Union, the U.K. and Switzerland.

The JET program uses the same deuterium-tritium fuel mix under similar conditions to those that are planned for the ITER facility being built on a 180-hectare site at Saint Paul-lez-Durance, 75 km north of Marseille.

Iter总干事Bernard Bigot评论说，JET持续的功率输出是“我们正朝着完整的融合能力迈进时，我们走上了正确的轨道，这是一个强大的信心建造者。”

ITER反应堆计划在2025年开始工作after 15 years of construction. It aims eventually to generate the 500 MW of fusion power as a precursor to a full-scale prototype.