As an engineer actively involved in the Nuclear Fusion developments I would like to use steemit as well as a platform to talk about this field and, more in particular, to report in the project on which I am currently dedicated, the ITER project.
Nevertheless, understanding that, someone may not know about Nuclear Fusion Technology, I prefer to start with by summarizing in the following lines what Fusion Energy would mean in not so far future.
What is Fusion
I love this statement: “Fusion is the process which powers the sun and the stars. It is energy that makes all life on earth possible. It is called 'fusion' because the energy is produced by fusing together light atoms, such as hydrogen, at the extremely high pressures and temperatures which exist at the centre of the sun (15 million ºC). At the high temperatures experienced in the sun any gas becomes plasma, the fourth state of matter (solid, liquid and gas being the other three)” (source F4E).
Replication of a star in the earth
In order to replicate this process on earth, gases need to be heated to extremely high temperatures of about 150 million degrees ºC whereby atoms become completely ionised.
The fusion reaction that is easiest to accomplish is the reaction between two hydrogen isotopes: deuterium, extracted from water and tritium, produced during the fusion reaction through contact with lithium. When deuterium and tritium nuclei fuse, they form a helium nucleus, a neutron and a lot of energy.” (source F4E).
Even there are a few possible methods which have the potentiality to produce Fusion energy but they are still under very conceptual stages of conception, the main hope is centred on tokamak reactors and stellarators which confine a deuterium-tritium plasma magnetically).
Basically, in a tokamak the plasma is held in a doughnut-shaped vessel. Using special coils, a magnetic field is generated, which causes the plasma particles to run around in spirals, without touching the wall of the chamber (image courtesy of https://www.euro-fusion.org/).
Instead, in a sterallator reactor, the magnetic confinement of the plasma is provided by also coils but this time in an helicoidal disposition that, despite the advantages on the paper, seems to be more complex than tokamak.
Independently of the succeeded method, Fusion power development offers the prospect of an almost inexhaustible source of energy for future generations, but it also presents so far insurmountable scientific and engineering challenges.
Fusion will be available as a future energy option by the middle of this century, and should be able to acquire a significant role in providing a sustainable, secure and safe solution to tackle the global energy needs
In summary, the development of this technology is an urgent and a mandatory work for the humanity if we want to become totally independent from the traditional petrol, carbon or, even worst, Nuclear Fision energy, having among its main advantages the non-emission of any CO2, greenhouse gases, efficient energy, abundant fuel sources, safe systems and no long-lived radioactive waste.
In future articles I will try to focus the attention in the ITER project , an international nuclear fusion research and engineering project, which will be the world's largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment.
Thanks for reading!
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