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Fusion, How It All Comes Together

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Date: 01/02/12

TODAY: PA Testing Day! In these reactors, hydrogen gas is initially heated by microwaves and neutral particle beams from accelerators. The hydrogen gas is turned into plasma and then heated further by passing an electric current through it. This plasma is then squeezed using magnetic fields generated by superconducting magnets. Nuclear fusion takes place inside the plasma. This heats it further and allows further fusion to occur. The power needed to start the fusion in the ITER will be about 70 megawatts, but calculations show the power generated from the reaction will be about 500 megawatts.

usion is which multiple atomic nuclei collide at a very high velocity and coalesce to form a new type of atomic nucleus.

Remember that graph we showed you last issue? Now as you see, Iron is the largest element that cam be fusioned and the smallest to be fissioned. The concept of fusion is not really too complex: when two small nuclei fuse together a tiny amount of their mass is converted into energy (via E = mc2). Making it happen in a controlled manner, however, is really hard! The nuclei to be fused together are both positively charged and so there is a strong electrostatic repulsion, especially when they get really close together. Fusion takes place in the core of the Sun because of the immense heat and pressure. This means that the hydrogen nuclei are going fast enough to overcome the electrostatic repulsion. When they get close enough, the strong nuclear force takes over and they fuse together. Fusion reactors are designed to superheat a small volume of hydrogen to initiate fusion. This heat is then used to turn water to steam, which turns turbines and generates electricity in the usual way. There are currently two main techniques being experimented with:

Inertial Confinement

This approach uses very high energy laser beams to heat the hydrogen plasma. The National Ignition Facility (NIF) of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in the United States is experimenting with fusion by this technique. The reactor built at NIF uses 192 laser beams focussed into a special chamber called a hohlraum (from the German for hollow cavity). This chamber is quite small; inside it is a pea-sized pellet made of a combination of deuterium and tritium coated in a layer of plastic. The lasers, which produce an energy output of 1.8 megajoules, are used to heat the hohlraum. It gets so hot that it emits high-energy X-rays. The heat generated turns the surface of the pellet into a plasma: this explodes outwards from the pellet. In accordance with Newton's third law, the remaining material in the pellet is pushed inwards and compressed. It collapses into a very small point of incredibly high density and even higher temperature. This produces a short-lived fusion reaction, but it will generate 50100 times more energy than is needed to initiate the fusion reaction. This energy could be used to initiate further fusion reactions or just be converted into heat and then electricity by the usual methods.

Magnetic Confinement

The technique uses magnetic and electric fields to compress and heat hydrogen plasma. This approach is used by the JET experimental reactor in Oxfordshire and its bigger brother, the future ITER project currently under construction in France. The most efficient shape for these types of reactors is a toroid: they are doughnut -shaped!
FUSION! Investment in this phenomenon is huge. Do you think its worth it? Mail: Mike Wazowski c/o Mike Wazoski You Got Your Life Back Lane