Nuclear Fusion
Nuclear fusion has piqued everyone’s interest, but many people have no idea how it works or how it can change the world .To understand how this works, we must first understand what nuclear fusion is.
Nuclear fusion is the process by which two excited atoms collide and fuse to form a single atom. During this process, a large amount of energy and a few subatomic particles are released.
Steps involved in nuclear fusion reaction:
In this century where we have exhausted most of the non-renewable resources, Nuclear fusion provides electrical fusion power to supply all of global civilization without the use of polluting fossil fuels such as coal, oil, or natural gas.
Two facts about Nuclear Fusion before we learn about Nuclear Fusion Reactors.
# Nuclear fusion does not provide fusion energy for heavier elements.
When two lighter elements, hydrogen and helium, combine, the resulting third atom has excess energy and extra neutrons in its nucleus, making it unstable. It attains it’s stability by releasing fusion energy as well as the extra high-energy neutrons.
# Where does natural nuclear fusion occur?
Yes, nuclear fusion occurs in the sun. Inside the Sun, this process begins with protons/ lone hydrogen nucleus which fuse together and become helium through a sequence of stages. This fusion process occurs within the Sun’s core, and the transformation results in the release of energy, which keeps the sun hot all the time. And, of course, we humans, learnt about this process and are developing it in a smaller scale to produce energy.
Nuclear fusion reactors have been developed by scientists to generate energy. We shall now discuss the mechanisms involved in reactors as well as the types of reactors.
The sun is mostly composed of hydrogen, the lightest element, fusing together to form helium, the second-lightest element, with the release of fusion energy. As fusion fuel, a nuclear fusion reactor uses lighter materials. Fusion reactors on Earth use light elements like deuterium and tritium, two hydrogen isotopes, as fusion fuel. Our scientists considered Deuterium and tritium as potential nuclear fusion fuel rather than hydrogen. This is because, while the sun’s technique works great due to its massive mass and size, we can more readily initiate a fusion reaction with a deuterium atom colliding with another deuterium atom or tritium atoms at our much smaller scale utilizing nuclear fusion devices.
Types of nuclear fusion reactors:
There are two types of nuclear fusion reactors that are frequently utilised nowadays. They are inertial confinement reactors and magnetic confinement reactors. Magnetic confinement fusion is a method of producing thermonuclear fusion power that use magnetic fields to confine fusion fuel in the form of a plasma. Inertial confinement fusion is a fusion energy that compresses and heats targets filled with thermonuclear fuel to ignite nuclear fusion processes. Other reactor names include Tokamak, Stellarator, and etc.
Companies developing nuclear fusion reactors:
Tokamak Energy and First Light Fusion have established different goals of establishing a functional reactor by 2030. These two companies are using the tokamak design 1950. There are many startups that are working to develop this technology, some of them are Commonwealth Fusion Systems, General Fusion, Flibe Energy and Seaborg Technologies. All of these companies are working on different components, but the end goal is to utilize this power.
Technological barriers:
This technology appears to be flawless and beneficial, but immense heat and pressure are necessary to initiate and complete a nuclear fusion reaction. We can’t keep these high levels up for long with the technologies we have. And we may require expensive equipment to do so. At the same time reaching a temperature higher than that of the sun could be devastating and almost impossible. And if the radioactive waste produced is not removed by robotic technology, it remains and does not degrade. So we need a technology to reduce this waste. It’s also difficult to find Tritium ions, which are used in the fusion reaction, and producing them with current technology is not practically possible.
Conclusion:
Nuclear Fusion Energy is the best non-renewable resource choice and is relatively environmental friendly. Many companies are attempting to make it a functional energy source, but there are a few technological challenges that we must overcome before it can be effective.