Russia 'rattled' by UK's response to invasion says Meyer
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A recent breakthrough using bleeding-edge artificial intelligence systems has brought the world closer to unlimited clean energy. Successful experiments suggest that using AI to shape the superheated hydrogen plasmas inside a fusion reactor could be key in the quest to develop nuclear fusion – tipped to be the Holy Grail energy source as it can provide limitless power.
This experiment also brings the world closer to phasing out fossil fuels entirely, a resource that is currently being exploited by Russian President Vladimir Putin as he invades Ukraine.
The European Union still relies on Russia for 40 percent of its gas supplies.
Despite Russia’s military siege of its neighbour, the bloc is yet to slash its energy ties with Putin, still importing vast volumes while harsh sanctions batter other sections of the Russian economy.
Russia has also seen its profits from these gas exports to the EU, which experts argue is bankrolling Putin’s military excursions.
Meanwhile, Russia has sent prices skyrocketing by deliberately slashing the volumes of gas supplies travelling through its network.
Earlier this month, European natural gas prices skyrocketed again to a record high above €200 (£165) per megawatt-hour.
Speaking to Live Science, Federico Felici, a physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and one of the leaders on the project said: “I think AI will play a very big role in the future control of tokamaks and in fusion science in general,”
“There’s a huge potential to unleash AI to get better control and to figure out how to operate such devices in a more effective way.”
“What we did was really a kind of proof of principle.
“We are very happy with this first step.”
Researchers at the EPFL’s Swiss Plasma Center (SPC) worked with scientists and engineers at the British company DeepMind, a subsidiary of Alphabet, the company that owns Google.
The team at Deepmind helped test the artificial intelligence system on the Variable Configuration Tokamak (TCV) in Lausanne.
The tokamak, which is a doughnut-shaped reactor, is primarily controlled using 19 magnetic coils which are used to shape and position the hydrogen plasma inside the fusion chamber, while directing an electric current through it, Mr Felici explained to Live Science.
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The coils are operated by a set of independent computerised controllers, which are programmed according to complex control engineering calculations.
However, Mr Felici noted that the new AI system, developed by DeepMind, was able to manipulate the plasma with a single controller, making it a cheaper and much safer alternative.
The UK is a pioneer in the quest for nuclear fusion, with researchers at the UK’s Joint European Torus (JET) laboratory setting a new record for the amount of energy that can be extracted from nuclear fusion.
They conducted experiments that produced 59 megajoules of energy over five seconds – double what was previously achieved in 1997.
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