Nuclear energy waste has proven troublesome to store, fossil fuels are poisonous and solar battery technology still far from being called efficient for those cloudy days. In the wake of these revelations, you'd think we'd put a bit more of the ol' elbow grease to solving the riddle of fusion power. But before we talk about fusion we need to know what it is.
*No, it's definitely not this.*
For those of us on acquainted with the type energy, it's a thermonuclear process where atom are stripped of the electron in excessively temperatures, leave a plasma made up of free nuclei and electrons.
Nuclei are positively charge and they repel one another. In the core of star, this is overcome because of the massive pressures and temperatures, in the million in fact, which results in the nuclei gaining enough speed fussing them together to form heavier nuclei which then in term release energy. This latter part of the stellar thermonuclear process is what the subject of fusion power research is concerned with.
Since we can't use the same brutal mechanics as the sun, then we have to figure out how to produce fusion reactions on earth. Scientists have been hard at work trying to build fusion reactors and it's proving to be a daunting and difficult task.
One such reactor is the Magnetic Confinement Reactor. This type of reactor uses superconducting electromagnets chilled with liquid Helium to temperatures close to absolute zero.
The second kind of reactor is the Inertial Confinement Reactor wherein fuel pellets are gunned with super powerful lasers making the fuel hot and dense enough to produce the fusion process.
These experimental reactors are just that, experimental and are far off from being commercially viable. This is due to the fact that it takes more to produce energy than the actual output. The allure with developing fusion reactor technology is that if we could actually solve the problem of energy input verses output, it would be totally worthwhile. The fuel needed in these reactions would be so small that a cupful could produce as much energy as a barrel of gas without waste material.
The fuel needed would be Hydrogen and Helium, of which we have in abundance as sea water and it turns out we would need that much of that stuff.
There is no issue of harmful waste materials this fusion reactor plants so the only other concern would be the iffiness of hosting stellar process on our planet.
No worries. fusion power plants would be the least danger of all existing power plants. We've already mentioned about that there is no dangerous waste to speak of but also, there is no risk of a meltdown since they down work like nuclear reactors. In the case of confinement failure the plasma cool down, therefore stopping there fusion reaction.
*We have enough meltdowns. We don't need anymore that.*
The main reason we're so far of with developing this technology is a matter of finance and politics. And it doesn't help when it's still unproven. With focuses ever shifting toward solar, thermo, wind and wave productions of energy, the future seem empty of the promise of a fusion utopia.
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