The Future for Fusion

Today, when chemistry classes teach nuclear chemistry, students learn that fusion reactions release more energy than fission reactions, are inexpensive, and produce non-radioactive products. Yet, fission reactions which hold environmental concern, such as where to dispose its radioactive waste, are currently used. The major setback with fusion is the high temperatures needed which cannot be contained.

However, emerging technology has not only begun the creation of fusion reactors but is now trying to build a new fusion reactor that can achieve ignition, “the point where a fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining instead of requiring a constant input of energy.”MIT physics professor, Bruno Coppi, is the principal investigator for Ignitor; a tokamak reactor. Italy and Russia are in agreement with building this new reactor which will be constructed outside Moscow.

This new reactor uses “powerful magnetic fields to produce fusion by squeezing superheated plasma of hydrogen isotopes”. The plasma is heated to extreme temperatures when an electric current and high-frequency radio waves pass through the plasma. However, the heat is confined by electromagnetic fields through high pressure. Both the pressure and the heat will than cause hydrogen nuclei to fuse and form helium. This process is what will release the enormous amount of heat that will then be used to power an electricity-generating turbine.

Unlike the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a reactor being built in France which had hoped to reach ignition, Ignitor might be able to be used “within a few years”. Yet most scientists in the field agree that practical fusion power is at least two decades away which is unfortunate because it would be free of greenhouse-gas emissions – a big concern for environmentalists. However, all is not in vain; “the whole point of Ignitor is to find out how a burning plasma behaves, and there could be pleasant or unpleasant results coming from it. Whatever is learned is a gain. Nobody knows exactly how it will perform, that is the point of the experiment." The future for fusion, although not as close as some may wish, is still bright.

Sources:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100512145348.htm

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/25379/?a=f