Fusion reactions promise cheaper, cleaner energy than that provided by conventional nuclear fission reactor facilities. While fission involves splitting elements, fusion works by overcoming certain elements’ natural repulsion to fuse them together, releasing huge amounts of kinetic energy in the process.

To make fusion happen extremely high temperatures—in excess of 100 million degrees Kelvin (180 million degrees Fahrenheit)—need to be reached in the reactor core (known as the ‘torus’). At these temperatures, the Deuterium-Tritium gas mixture used as the fuel source becomes a scorching hot, electrically charged gas known as a plasma.