Joint European Torus (JET)

node · earth

JET, at Culham in Oxfordshire, was for four decades the largest operating tokamak and the only one besides TFTR licensed to run on a full deuterium-tritium mixture. In its 1997 DTE1 campaign it reached a peak fusion power of 16.1 MW and produced 22 MJ of fusion energy in a single pulse. In its final campaign, DTE3, it set a record of 69.26 MJ of fusion energy released in a single 5.2-second pulse on 3 October 2023, from roughly 0.2 milligrams of fuel, surpassing the 59 MJ set during DTE2 in December 2021. JET ceased plasma operations at the end of 2023 after 105,842 pulses and is being decommissioned; its deuterium-tritium operating experience and tritium-handling data are its bequest to ITER. JET never produced net energy: its records are records of total fusion energy released, not of energy returned.