South Korea invests in commercial fusion-plant prototype

Nature : South Korea, which is already developing a tokamak reactor and is participating in the ITER project, has announced another major fusion-facility project. The Korean Demonstration Fusion Power Plant (K-DEMO) is a joint project with the US Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. The goal is to use the technology developed in the South Korean tokamak project and by ITER to have a prototype commercial fusion plant operating by the 2030s. Korea plans to invest nearly 1 trillion won ($941 million) in the project, the first phase of which will be to develop the technology needed so that construction can begin in the early 2020s. With 300 million won already invested, the country hopes to employ 2400 workers in the initial phase. The final plan is a reactor that can produce 1 billion watts of power for several weeks, significantly higher than ITER’s goal of 500 million watts for just 500 seconds. Perhaps even more significant than the power goal is the plan for the reactor to be connected to the electrical grid, which would make it the first fusion reactor to produce commercial electricity.