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.
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25 Comments on "Nuclear Fusion Alternative Energy"
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Beelzeboogie on Fri, 20th Mar 2009 5:29 pm
Yeah but convincing 7 billion people to agree on something ain’t gonna happen.
I wouldn’t consider “a few thousand years” even with double the earth’s population to be particularly short term.
Maybe i’m just an optimist
Give us a few thousand years and we won’t be confined to this rock any more.
zach2288 on Mon, 23rd Mar 2009 5:30 am
lol now your thinking like me. There are simply too many people on this planet. Close to 7 billion members of a species is too much. If people want to continue to live in semi luxury for an extended amount of time then the sensible solution would be to cut the population so there are more resources to go around. The hard part is getting people to have less children. Fusion is good short term but people get lazy: if it’s working for us now we will not change it untill there is a problem.
Beelzeboogie on Mon, 23rd Mar 2009 7:01 pm
Well that’s true, it takes hydrogen-1 a long time to become deuterium naturally so theoretically it may run out. But there is genuinely no such thing as unlimited energy, it has to come from somewhere. However given the amount of deuterium and the relative power ratio compared with conventional energy sources, it still makes sense. Without something to replace fossil fuels we have only two options, Reduce the global population by a massive degree, or return human society to the dark ages.
zach2288 on Wed, 25th Mar 2009 5:39 am
Deuterium is a hydrogen isotope, a naturally occuring thing on earth, it just has a neutron. So….. if you get rid of the hydrogen you eventually loose one of the building blocks of water. This video is very misleading it uses phrases like virtually unlimited..but that means the source is limited. The answer to the energy crisis is to use less, not create more, there is only so much energy we can get and will always face problems of resource depletion and lack of energy if we dont change.
Beelzeboogie on Wed, 25th Mar 2009 6:21 pm
It’s not water itself but the Deuterium in water that’s used.
zach2288 on Sat, 28th Mar 2009 2:40 pm
Sure it’s long term but not renewable so eventually when you run out of water and lithium ….then what? Why would anyone want to turn water which is key to our planets life and climate, into helium which is useless as far as earth is concerned. One bathtub for one person for 30 years….rough math…. thats about 1931200000000 Litres for the entire world population in one lifetime turned into helium forever… the ammount of water in the oceans is 1370000000000000000000 litres so think about it
Axander999 on Tue, 31st Mar 2009 7:58 am
These “JET”fusion guys have been saying they will have an excess power fusion in 30 years,but they have been saying the same thing for the last 60 years.
MaVerIcKO88 on Tue, 31st Mar 2009 3:58 pm
The plasma is suspended in a vacuum by superconducting magnets, so it can’t make contact with anything.
cyborgtroy on Fri, 3rd Apr 2009 11:29 pm
In a thermonuclear bomb it is.
In a fusion power plant, it’s provided by … stuff. Stuff I don’t understand.
krayzeebean on Mon, 6th Apr 2009 11:50 pm
First of all, the argument was wether or not fusion had been done, and a hydrogen bomb “does” fusion. Second, the primary stage, which is the fission reaction, may use a fusion catalyst in some designs. However, the primary stage is still just the trigger for the secondary stage, which is a fusion reaction. Some designs also use a tertiary stage, which is another fusion reaction.
ratkumchase101 on Fri, 10th Apr 2009 12:54 am
If it reaches over 100 million, why is it not melting the building ?
chairde on Fri, 10th Apr 2009 3:50 am
Well then I wish the Europeans well because it would be good for mankind.
wtfAvailableUser on Sun, 12th Apr 2009 1:59 pm
chairde,
Fusion in that power plant concept isnt a chain reaction at all. If the breeding of tritium is stoped, the whole reaction stops.
wtfAvailableUser on Tue, 14th Apr 2009 2:38 pm
krayzeebean, its you who needs education. Fusion is only a catalyst to increase the efficiency of the fision reaction.
saturnhexagon on Thu, 16th Apr 2009 5:39 pm
The largest current experiment is the Joint European Torus [JET]. In 1997, JET produced a peak of 16.1 MW of fusion power (65% of input power), with fusion power of over 10 MW sustained for over 0.5 sec. - There’s your proof of concept, zexecl
zexecl on Mon, 20th Apr 2009 1:37 am
In order to start a Fusion reaction you need a high energy spark which is provided by a nucluer fisson denonation
zexecl on Thu, 23rd Apr 2009 11:59 am
Wrong its not the energy input, its the energy needed to confine nucleur Fuison. Inorder to start a Fusion reaction a fission reaction is used as a park, which is seen in the hydrogen bomb. However you get a miniature sun on Earth, (damn hot) so inorder to contain this magnetic field needed however needed to confine it would be the same energy as the fusion itself
krayzeebean on Fri, 24th Apr 2009 4:37 am
Jomomma, you should read up on how hydrogen bombs work before posting. Since you apparently missed my earlier comment, I’ll repeat: Hydrogen bombs use a fission explosion to compress a secondary fuel, creating a much larger fusion explosion.
Jomomma7II on Fri, 24th Apr 2009 4:29 pm
its too bad that the 1st one that isnt a prototype isnt expected to be done until 2035…
Jomomma7II on Mon, 27th Apr 2009 8:53 am
the hydrogen bombs are different. they use nuclea FISION
saturnhexagon on Mon, 27th Apr 2009 1:45 pm
Fusion occurs in the sun because of its massive gravity and heat. With enough energy and heat you could probably make fusion occur here on earth, but the cost of the energy put in would outweigh any output.
prashanth817 on Mon, 27th Apr 2009 9:33 pm
@chairde
Fusion has been experimented and to confirm what krazyzeeban said, its an uncontrolled mechanism as in the case of the bomb. The main problem with fusion in a controlled manner is containing the plasma. Magnetic fields haven’t been entirely successful. Nevertheless fusion is a renewable source and just as Solar was once very inefficient with p-v cells and is now becoming more feasible with parabolic mirrors and etc, fusion technology will probably advance for electricity generation.
krayzeebean on Fri, 1st May 2009 9:27 am
Just because it uses more energy now doesn’t mean that it’ll always be that way. If you give up just because your first experiments don’t work out perfectly then we’d still be in the stone age.
ITER is expected to produce more energy than it consumes, and other reactor designs theoretically will produce more energy than you put in. Solar power alone isn’t enough to satisfy the worlds demand for energy.
chairde on Mon, 4th May 2009 3:04 am
It is a good wish to have but it is simply not feasible in reality. Those experiments are bogus and the Europeans are not going to succeed. Control of the chain reaction is important and also why have an energy source that takes more energy than it will produce? In any case, I wish the Europeans well. Go solar instead, God has already worked out the control problems and other issues.:-)
krayzeebean on Mon, 4th May 2009 7:55 pm
The hydrogen bomb uses a fission explosion to compress a secondary fuel, resulting in a fusion explosion. Read up on hydrogen bombs and come back. I say again sir, JET has already performed a fusion experiment generating electricity. The problem with fusion power now is that it requires more energy than we get out of it, but it’s still fusion. ITER is expected to generate more power than was input. Fusion power is much safer and cleaner than fission, something like Chernobyl is impossible.