What is going on with nuclear fusion, and which city is launching a fusion reactor in 2023?

What is going on with nuclear fusion, and which city is launching a fusion reactor in 2023?

Introduction

Nuclear fusion is the process of combining hydrogen atoms into heavier nuclei. The result is helium, with some additional neutrons and protons that were not present in the starting material. Nuclear fusion produces enormous amounts of energy, but it's a long-term process that has yet to be achieved on earth. There are many ways to get started with nuclear fusion research; some focus on creating reactors which use superheated hydrogen gas as fuel while others investigate ways to create plasma without needing an external source of heat (or pressure). In this article we'll discuss what we know about nuclear fusion right now and where things stand with regard to making it happen here on planet Earth!

Nuclear fusion is the reaction of atoms that releases enormous amounts of energy.

Nuclear fusion is the reaction of atoms that releases enormous amounts of energy. In other words, it's like a nuclear battery that can power you up with unlimited power.

It works like this: hydrogen fuel gets heated to superheated levels and then fuses into helium nuclei (the building blocks of stars). This creates a plasma—a gas made up mostly of positively charged ions and electrons—that releases vast amounts of energy as it cools down again. The world's first commercial fusion reactor isn't ready for prime time yet; it needs more research before it can actually generate electricity reliably enough to power homes or light cities like Los Angeles or New York City!

Fusion reactors heat hydrogen fuel to superheated levels and create a plasma.

When you hear the term fusion, what comes to mind? Is it a nuclear bomb? Maybe you think of Star Trek's USS Enterprise crossing a river on its way to meet up with the Federation at the center of this galaxy. Or maybe it's something else entirely: perhaps your first exposure to the concept of fusion came from watching cartoons as a child and being told that they were "too hot" because they could turn into plasma; nowhere are these concepts more relevant than in today's world of energy production.

Fusion is defined by Wikipedia as "the process by which two or more atoms join together under extreme pressure and temperature conditions so that their nuclei fuse together". This definition encompasses both fission (which can be used for generating electricity) and fusion (which can be used for generating heat). Unlike fission, however, which uses neutrons generated from splitting atoms apart in an atomic-bomb explosion; when hydrogen fuel is heated up extremely high enough (over 100 million degrees Fahrenheit), it becomes plasma—a superheated gas containing positively charged nuclei called ions surrounded by electrons. Plasmas contain several unusual properties that make them ideal for producing electricity: they conduct electricity very well at high temperatures (upwards from 1 million K), making them ideal candidates for powering industrial processes such as heating steel mills or rolling factories.

The world's first commercial fusion reactor is not yet ready for prime time.

The world's first commercial fusion reactor is not yet ready for prime time. It will be located at Princeton University, and construction is set to begin in 2021. But even then, the reactor won't be operating until 2023—and even then it will only produce electricity for one million hours of use by 2025 at most.

The project has been going on since 2014 with $180 million in funding from the Department of Energy (DOE), but so far no other country has matched that investment or interest in taking part in what's known as "demonstration" fusion research: an effort to learn more about how these processes work before investing heavily into one type of device or another.

A group of scientists from MIT have figured out how to get the first plasma in a lab.

A group of scientists from MIT have figured out how to get the first plasma in a lab.

They've been working on this for years, but they're not the only group working on this. The MIT team has a new way to get the plasma to stay stable, which will allow them to try their experiment again and again until they have enough data points. They're not there yet—but we are closer than ever before thanks to breakthroughs in materials science over the past few decades (and thanks also for trying).

The experimental reactor will be located at Princeton University.

The experimental reactor will be located at Princeton University. The project, known as the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), is being built by a company called Helion Energy. The company has been working on fusion reactors since 2007, when it received a grant from the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).

The reactor's design was chosen through an open competition in 2015 that invited proposals from universities around the world; PPPL's bid included plans for three different types of fusion reactors: one with helium gas and two with deuterium/tritium mix. After evaluating their proposals, officials selected Helion Energy's proposal because it offered "the best balance between cost and performance," according to an article published by Science Magazine last year. The company plans on building its first prototype by 2022—and if all goes well during testing phase after that point (which will last five years), scientists expect commercial operation sometime around 2023 or 2024!

We're closer than ever before to using this technology for generating electricity, but we still don't know if it will work or not.

While it's exciting to think about what the future might look like, there are still many unknowns about nuclear fusion. For example, scientists aren't sure if the technology will work or not. They also don't know how long it will take for fusion reactors to be ready for commercial use.

In short: we're closer than ever before to using this technology for generating electricity, but we still don't know if it will work or not—and even if it does go into operation (and no one knows how long that could take), there's no guarantee that anyone will have access to its power source!

Conclusion

It’s clear that this technology holds great promise and has the potential to bring electricity directly from the sun or other sources to our homes. The problem is that we don't know if it will work or not yet, and as scientists are still working on figuring out what makes fusion reactors tick, there's no guarantee that it will succeed in the long run either way.