Is Nuclear Fission Possible On Earth?

Fusion differs from fission, which has been our only way of generating electricity from atoms since the 1950s. As the price of wind and solar energy continues to fall, experts say they offer an economical and timely way to combat climate change by harvesting energy from an untested technology: nuclear fusion. The amount of energy generated by nuclear fusion is more than four times that of a fission reaction, and fusion reactions could form the basis for future fusion-powered reactors.

Under the plans, a first-generation fusion reactor would use a mixture of deuterium and tritium, a heavier type of hydrogen. Scientists have achieved this by conducting deuterion-tritium fusion experiments at Tokamak Fusion test reactor in the US and the Joint European Torus in the UK. The "deuterium-tritium fusion campaign" will continue this year with a British experiment.

For decades, researchers have been trying to mimic natural solar fusion on Earth by building what one physicist called a "solar box.". If successful, it would be the first device to reach burning plasma to heat up the fusion reaction and keep it running without having to pump in additional energy. But nobody has been able to harness the power of burning plasma and control the reaction on Earth, so further research is needed to get it right.

The basic idea is to take a kind of hydrogen gas, heat it to more than 100 million degrees and then form it into a thin, fragile cloud called plasma, controlling it with strong magnets until atoms fuse and release energy. The first idea was to fire a projectile at a target containing hydrogen atoms. The shock wave caused by the impact of the projectile would produce shock waves that would crush the fuel and the reaction would produce a plasma hotter than the sun and denser than lead.

In order to carry out nuclear fusion, the fuel atoms must receive enough energy to converge, and here strong forces become relevant. The amount of kinetic energy required to bring fuel atoms close together is known as the coulomb barrier. One of the possibilities to provide this energy is to accelerate the atoms by means of a particle accelerator or to heat them up to very high temperatures.

Researchers heat hydrogen atoms with different tools, including particle beams and electromagnetic fields such as microwaves, radio waves and lasers. The temperature needed to get hot enough for hydrogen fuel to become a plasma, a state in which matter exists as its atoms split into charged particles. In the nuclear fusion that drives the sun and stars, hydrogen atoms fuse to form helium and adsorb, adsorb, into energy.

Thermonuclear fusion is a process that occurs when two atoms are combined to form a bigger atom, generating a lot of energy. When the fusion takes place in stars, including the sun, hydrogen atoms fuse with each other through intense pressure and heat, producing helium and energy. Since hydrogen is heated to high temperatures, the gas plasma changes and the charged electrons are separated from the charged atomic nuclei (ions).

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald have shown that it is possible to superheat hydrogen atoms using a machine called the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator to a plasma of up to 80 million degrees Celsius. This plasma is formed on the basis of nuclear fusion in which hydrogen atoms with their nuclei collide and fuse to form helium atoms - a process that releases energy similar to what happens in our solar system. We do not yet have the technology to replicate the massive pressure of the suns, but researchers have made hydrogen atoms so hot that they bring the sun into the hundreds of millions of degrees Fahrenheit range.

Fusion energy is an experimental form of electricity generation that generates electricity through nuclear fusion reactions. Nuclear fusion is simply put the process whereby two light atomic nuclei combine to form a single heavy nucleus, releasing an enormous amount of energy. Fusion is a process in which two atomic nuclei combine to form a heavier nucleus and release energy.

Fusion is a reaction that occurs when two or more nuclear nuclei together and the nuclear force that pulls them together exceeds the electrostatic force that pushes them apart and fuses them into a heavier nucleus. By firing neutrons at atoms to start the fusion, the two charged nuclei can be brought so close that they fuse together. Fusion takes place in a plasma that is limited at sufficient intervals to a sufficient temperature and pressure.

The energy density of a fusion reaction in gas is lower than that of a fission reaction in solid fuels, but note that the reaction's heat yield is about 70 times lower.

The neutron energy of nuclear fusion is much higher than that of nuclear fission (14.1 MeV vs. 2 MeV), which poses considerable challenges with regard to structural materials. In addition, fission reactors use solid fuels that are less dense than thermonuclear plasma, so that the energy released is less concentrated. Thermonuclear fusion has a much lower power density than nuclear fission, which would mean that fusion reactors would have to be much larger and more expensive than nuclear reactors to provide the same power.

Experiments like the US Tokamak fusion test reactor and Britain's Joint European Torus can trigger fusion reactions through massive external warming, but it takes more energy to sustain these reactions than to generate them. The next phase of mainstream fusion research includes an experiment called ITER (Latin : ITER) which is built in south France. ITER will restrict helium ions to produce a reaction without generating as much heat as an external heat source.

Today, fusion reactions take place in a tokamak, a doughnut-shaped chamber where gas is pumped into a vacuum chamber and electricity flows through the center of the hole.

The gas is charged and forms a plasma that is blocked in the vacuum chamber by magnetic fields generated by massive magnetic coils that mimic the pressure of the solar core. Radio and microwave fire into the plasma and raise its temperature to 100 million degrees, where fusion can occur. Apart from the expensive electricity required to heat the chamber, the main obstacle to maintaining such a reaction is finding materials that can withstand heat for more than a few seconds.