Even then it can’t be easily stored with its short half-life of 12.3 years. There is next to no naturally occurring tritium and the little that does exist has to be harvested from the upper atmosphere. The reaction could provide abundant clean energy – just as soon as fusion scientists figure out how to efficiently spark it.’ – Science. ‘When tritium is combined at high temperatures with its sibling deuterium, the two gases can burn like the Sun. Normal hydrogen under Earth conditions isn’t a very good fuel, which is why there has been a lot of interest in the vanishingly rare radioactive isotope of hydrogen ‘tritium’ valued at $30,000 a gram. The trick is not blowing ourselves up trying to harness it. Despite fusion and fission developing side-by-side, there are only a few experimental fusion reactors that have produced positive tests, but no power.Īs an example, fusion reactors are trying to heat their fuel to 100 million degrees while the expelled neutrons eat away at most materials used to construct the reactor – like salt rusting away your beach house.įusion’s promises are utopian – a near-unlimited fuel resource, very little nuclear waste, and more power than humanity can use. Maintaining this high pressure environment to create and contain plasma to facilitate fusion is expensive, difficult, fragile, and ultimately dangerous – far more so than nuclear reactors (which look rather dull in comparison). (After all, we don’t want to collapse ourselves into a black hole by accident – CERN, we’re watching you in particular.) ![]() The gravity generated by the mass of stars does this easily, but that kind of gravitational power does not exist on Earth for obvious reasons. In order to fuse anything, the ‘Coulomb barrier’ has to be reached. It’s not the sort of technology you want to bring along to the science fair. There are many circumstances that may cause the process of nuclear fusion to go wrong along the way, leading to dangerous and bizarre stellar deaths that wipe out solar systems. It usually ends in a supernova – or catastrophic collapse of the star’s core accompanied by a violent expulsion of its outer layers. Nuclear fusion in stars is not a calm or safe process. It is the most efficient fuel source for a fusion reactor as it takes the least energy to fuse and yields the most from the process. Hydrogen, as the lightest element in the universe, fuses first providing the dominant source of energy for a star’s fusion reactor. Fusion is a natural behaviour when light elements are put under immense gravitational forces. Look up to the sun during the day or to any of the trillion stars in the night sky and you can see working examples of fusion reactors producing energy. Instead of splitting apart large atoms, two light atoms would be forced to combine – or fuse – together to form a heavy nucleus. They pursue the bigger dream of nuclear fusion. ![]() We have solved our energy problems.įor some, this is not enough. Even before we get to modified reactors, humans have 4 billion years of nuclear fuel. In other words, it is an extremely efficient way of producing energy. ‘The fission of 1 kg of uranium-235 releases about 19 billion kilocalories, so the energy released by 1 kg of uranium-235 corresponds to that released by burning 2.7 million kg of coal.’ ![]() At present, there are 422 nuclear reactors for energy and 223 research reactors – such as the ANSTO reactor in New South Wales. In its simplest terms, this heat is transferred to a gas or liquid which then moves a turbine to generate enormous amounts of electricity. A controlled chain reaction is initiated where a large nucleus, such as Uranium-235, absorbs a neutron and then splits into lighter elements. All operational nuclear power plants are based upon the breakthrough technology of nuclear fission.
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