International
On February 18th, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) announced landmark success in their nuclear fusion program.
France’s WEST tokamak reactor maintained a fusion reaction for just over 22 minutes.
Nuclear fusion holds promising potential for clean energy in the future, capable of producing energy worth 11 tons of coal from a single gram of hydrogen isotopes.
Despite requiring temperatures between 100 to 150 million degrees Celsius and up to 10 atmospheres of pressure, fusion is not difficult to achieve.
The challenge is producing a self-sustaining fusion reaction that provides more energy than it costs to run.
WEST maintained a reaction for 1,337 seconds, marking a 25 percent improvement over the previous record holder, China’s EAST tokamak which ran for 1,066 seconds in January.
CEA believes WEST will sustain even longer reactions lasting for hours in the future, but will never become commercial. Rather, information gathered through developing WEST will be put to use in more ambitious projects such as ITER, another French reactor.
“WEST has achieved a new key technological milestone by maintaining hydrogen plasma for more than twenty minutes through the injection of 2 MW of heating power,” Anne-Isabelle Etienvre, Director of Fundamental Research at the CEA, said. “Experiments will continue with increased power. This excellent result allows both WEST and the French community to lead the way for the future use of ITER.”
National
An air to air collision near Marana Regional Airport in Arizona left two dead on Wednesday.
According to the National Transportation Safety Board, one plane landed successfully on a runway, while the other crashed in flames nearby. Responders did not arrive in time to provide medical treatment.
Investigators say that each plane involved had two people aboard. The Marana Police Department announced that both deaths occurred in the same craft, while the survivors in the other plane only sustained injuries.
This is one of a series of aviation incidents since the beginning of 2025.
Most recently, a Delta jet turned upside down while landing in Toronto. In late January, 67 people died in a midair collision over Washington D.C. between an American Airlines passenger jet and an Army helicopter.
The Marana airport lacks an air traffic control tower. Though initially planned for construction, COVID-19 restrictions delayed its development.
The majority of U.S. airports do not have air traffic towers. Instead, pilots use a radio channel to announce their intentions, Jeff Guzzetti, an airline safety consultant and former Federal Aviation Administrator, told WTOP.
“All the pilots should be broadcasting on this common traffic advisory frequency,” he said. “And there’s also a responsibility to see and avoid. Each pilot is responsible to see and avoid so they don’t collide with each other.”
Local
On Wednesday, the Oklahoma City Fire Department responded to a call regarding a dog who fell through the ice in a pond near Meridian Avenue.
“We treat every rescue as a priority,” Battalion Chief David Mayers told News 9. “We approach each one the same way. In this case, the victim was a K9, but we did what we always do.”
The Fire Department’s dive team arrived in minutes, breaking through the ice as they deployed a boat to retrieve the dog located 50 to 60 feet from shore.
“Get him out of the cold environment into the warm, that’s always a key measure. We had blankets on the scene, so we could immediately wrap him up,” said Mayers. “We did full resuscitation measures, just like we would do for any victim we encountered.”
Unfortunately, the first responders were unable to stabilize the dog, which died shortly after.
“Their pets are their family and that’s what we are here to do, we’re here to serve the citizens and protect their family as best we can,” Mayers said. ”We go all the way every time.”
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