FISSION ENERGY DRINK CRACK

We are surely a long way from building a fusion power plant.ДЄt current rates of progress, the construction of the first demonstration nuclear fusion plant may not begin until around 2100.Д«ut Nif director Edward Moses has proposed a compromise plan to develop a hybrid fission-fusion plant that could be connected to the national grid in 20 years вЂ“ a laser inertial fusion engine (Life).Nuclear Energy: Renewable or Nonrenewable?

The formidable technicalities of tritium supply have yet to be worked out. Tritium generation must proceed with the greatest efficiency, otherwise the fusion process will wind down and stop. The neutrons will induce lithium to split into helium and tritium, and this tritium will replace the tritium used up in the fusion reaction. In theory, this will be done by allowing the high-energy neutrons generated in fusion to bombard a surrounding blanket containing lithium. The fusion plant must be designed to automatically generate a sufficient supply of its own tritium. However, a fusion plant will consume a kg of tritium per week, so to supply tritium from a fission plant is not a practical proposition. Tritium can be made in a conventional fission nuclear power plant at a rate of 2-3kg per year and at a cost of about $100 million (в‚¬74m) per kg.

The other reactant, deuterium is available in limitless supply from sea-water.

The core of the fusion plant must also be able to withstand extremely high temperatures year after year, and to withstand long-term bombardment from high-energy neutrons generated in the fusion process (this bombardment turns ordinary material brittle).ДЄnother problem is to source a continuous supply of tritium, one of the two reactants in the fusion process. So, thatвЂ™s where we are now вЂ“ trying to ignite the fusion process and keep it going for a short while.Д«ut, remember, in a working nuclear fusion plant the fusion must be maintained continuously, year in year out. Unlike the intermittent laser bursts in Nif, it is hoped that the magnetic field will hold the plasma together for up to hundreds of seconds, producing a sustained burst of fusion. The hot plasma will be contained by a magnetic field generated by superconducting magnets, and fusion will occur. Electrically charged particles are affected by a magnetic field. Iter will heat hydrogen, using microwave radiation, to 150 million degrees, creating a highly mobile state of matter called a plasma (a sea of electrically charged atoms). The second major fusion facility, a $14 billion project in southern France, named Iter, is scheduled to be built in 2018, and to start deuterium-tritium fusion tests in 2026. It is confidently expected that Nif will reach the point where fusion energy output exceeds the input energy. The laser energy will crush the pellet so forcefully that hydrogen fusion will occur, releasing much energy.ДЇusion has been achieved before, but more energy was used to generate the lasers than was released during fusion. The Nif will bombard pellets containing two heavy varieties of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium) with the worldвЂ™s most powerful laser beam. The National Ignition Facility (Nif), a 13-year, $4 billion enterprise at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, will start fusion experiments later this year. One relies on lasers and the other relies on heating a magnetically contained plasma. Two approaches are being used to achieve fusion.

In order to build a nuclear fusion power plant, therefore we must reproduce the enormously high temperature and pressure that exist in the interior of the sun, and these conditions must be safely maintained over long periods in the nuclear fusion power plant. Nuclear fusion is the process that takes place in our sun when hydrogen atoms fuse together to produce helium, releasing enormous amounts of energy in the process. Nuclear fusion, on the other hand, means the joining together (fusion) of atoms of the lightest natural element вЂ“ hydrogen. The current state of play in nuclear fusion is described by Michael Moyer in the March edition of Scientific American.Д¬onventional nuclear power, nuclear fission, is based on the break-up (fission) of the heaviest naturally occurring element вЂ“ uranium atoms.

FISSION ENERGY DRINK CRACK

However, developing a fusion reactor is proving to be a tough nut to crack and may take much longer than originally expected. NUCLEAR FUSION, which promises the clean production of virtually limitless energy from readily available raw materials, is the Holy Grail of research that hopes to find a viable successor to the generation of energy from fossil fuels.

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