"Nuclear fusion promises a green and infinitely renewable supply of energyif we can harness it. Fusion happens all the time inside the sun. But to recreate the process on Earth, we must control incredibly hot, chaotic matter in an exceedingly dense state. Prototypes of several different fusion-reactor designs are being tested around the world. The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, for example, uses lasers to spark fusion in a small pellet of fuel."
"Tokamaks, such as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in France, use electromagnetic fields to confine plasma and heat it to the temperatures and densities necessary to ignite fusion. And stellarators, such as the Wendelstein 7-X experiment in Germany, add a twist to the magnetic field concept of tokamaks. It's too soon to say whether any of these technologies can overcome their challenges to become a reliable energy source."
Nuclear fusion offers the potential for abundant, low-carbon energy by combining light nuclei and releasing mass-conversion energy. Achieving sustained fusion requires extremely high temperatures and densities and maintaining those conditions long enough to produce net energy gain. Multiple reactor approaches are being pursued: inertial confinement that uses lasers to compress fuel pellets, magnetic-confinement tokamaks that trap and heat plasma with electromagnetic fields, and stellarators that twist magnetic fields for improved stability. Each approach faces significant physics and engineering hurdles. Uncertainty remains about which technologies, if any, will become reliable commercial energy sources, while demand and climate concerns drive continued effort.
Read at www.scientificamerican.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]