this is the one trillion dollar experimental advanced superconducting tokamak or east though you may know it by its nickname the artificial sun and in this video we'll explore the true purpose of this system and why it isn't really a nuclear reactor a portion of this video is sponsored by datacamp the site to learn data science and coding at your own pace first of all we can start with an overview of the east fundamentals what is a superconducting tokumak a tokomak is a type of nuclear fusion reactor fusion reactors come in many shapes and sizes but a tokamak seems to be one of the favorites among the experts the types of reactors are often broken down into magnetic confinement and inertial confinement inertial confinement shoots a piece of fuel with a laser heating it up enough for nuclear fusion to take place magnetic confinement on the other hand uses electromagnets to keep a magnetic plasma inside a chamber where it is heated enough for fusion of these two the tokamak design which is what the east artificial sun uses is a magnetic confinement device the donut chamber shown here is a defining mark of the tokamak but the stellarator design is also popular a standard tokamak keeps the plasma in the donut ring shape using toroidal and colloidal magnets so now we know a tokamak uses magnets in a donut shaped chamber to contain hot plasma but why is it super conductive a superconductive magnet is basically a really really cold electromagnet like -NUMBER_TOKEN degrees celsius cold this means that the copper windings that make up the electromagnet have almost no resistance so very large currents can be put through them without damaging or overheating them these high currents produce an incredibly strong magnetic field which is obviously very useful when you need to contain a really hot plasma so far it sounds a lot like i've just been describing a nuclear reactor and mostly that is true so why isn't the east artificial sun really a nuclear reactor to understand this we need to know what a nuclear fusion reaction really is for nuclear fusion energy is produced by combining the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium when these are combined to produce a helium nucleus and a spare neutron energy is released this energy is released because the mass of a helium atom and a spare neutron is less than the mass of the original deuterium and tritium atoms this difference in mass is why energy is released because energy is mass times the speed of light squared as described by the one and only albert einstein because the speed of light is such a huge number this energy is very large even for a small change in mass but in the east artificial sun they are not trying to fuse deuterium and tritium this is why the project isn't really a nuclear reactor it's a nuclear test facility creating energy or fusion reactions as a whole is not the point of this project instead it is to understand how to create and maintain the conditions needed for fusion here on earth although the sun is able to achieve fusion reactions at a mere NUMBER_TOKEN million degrees celsius due to the incredibly high pressures on earth we need around NUMBER_TOKEN million degrees celsius this feeds into the greater purpose of this project which is to inform the international thermonuclear
START_SPONSOR_TOKEN a portion of this video is sponsored by datacamp the site to learn data science and coding at your own pace END_SPONSOR_TOKEN