Nuclear Fusion Alternative Energy
March 17, 2009 by admin
Filed under Featured Articles, Nuclear Fusion
Nuclear fusion (fusion as in to fuse two or more nuclei together as opposed to conventional nuclear power plants that use fission – splitting atoms apart) as an alternative source of power has been in development for over 50 years. Since the huge potential energy output was first demonstrated using a hydrogen (fission/fusion) bomb detonated over the Marshall Islands in 1952. So nuclear fusion is well proven as a process, so why do we not now have fusion power plants providing enormous amounts of cheap, clean energy?
Nuclear fusion problems
- Heat - Nuclei have to be forced together with enough energy to overcome the repelling electrical charges (Coulomb repulsion). The method used to create suitable conditions for nuclei to combine is heat. For fusion to take place extreme amounts of heat are required in the order of tens of millions of degrees. Not only are these temperatures difficult to create they are even more difficult to contain.
- Confinement - once the conditions have been achieved for fusion to take place, sufficient quantities of superheated nuclei need to be contained in order that there is enough time to permit the release of more energy than is needed to provide the heat in the first place! There are no materials available that can withstand the heat (above 100 million Celsius) needed in these experiments so powerful magnetic fields (100 times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field) are used in an effort to contain the reaction.
- Power - Up until recently, many “successful” fusion reactions have taken place producing colossal amounts of power. However, in every case this power output has only lasted for a fraction of a second and the resulting power output has been less than the power required to initiate the reaction.
However, the launch of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the world’s first large-scale nuclear fusion reactor, which is following on from the partial success of the Joint European Taurus (JET) in Culham, United Kingdom (which managed to generate almost the same energy as it consumed), may change everything. ITER is twice the size of the JET project and scientists hope to generate ten times more energy than it consumes. The first plasma (superheated nuclei) for fusion reactions will be produced by as soon as the end of 2016, with heat generation and possibly small scale electricity production by 2026. Full scale production (500 megawatts of fusion power) is not expected to be on-line for another 30-40 years. However this estimate is highly dependent on future funding decisions.
