Nuclear fusion is already a reality

This is one of the great dreams of science and humanity, many scientists from various nations are working as part of the international thermonuclear experimental reactor project known by its acronym in English ITER, which is building a huge reactor in the south of France, this project is a collaboration of 35 countries whose seven main members are nothing more and nothing less than china, the european union, india, japan, south korea, russia and the usa. practically we can say that the entire planet is united in achieve the objective of ITER, which is practical nuclear fusion and thus achieve a large-scale energy source, without CO2 emissions and without radioactive waste, it will be the first fusion facility capable of producing net energy and maintaining the fusion process for long periods of time, something that is currently a difficult challenge to achieve.

ITER will also test the necessary materials and technology representing a preliminary phase or prototype for the subsequent construction of a commercial demonstration facility and achieve profitable energy production that can practically and safely supply entire cities, ITER is expected to begin operate in the year 2025.

And a huge step towards achieving these goals is the new world record reached in China with a plasma temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius and also maintained it for 101 seconds, unlike what the reactors of nuclear power plants do that get the energy dividing the atoms, normally uranium or plutonium atoms in particular to be exact uranium 235, plutonium 239 to that process of division of atoms that nuclear power plants do is called fission.

The reactor used in China is scientifically known as HL-2M, a tokamak-type fusion reactor, which is a word of Russian origin, with which the toroidal-shaped or donut-shaped chamber made up of powerful magnetic coils is known, the objective of a tokamak is to achieve the fusion of the particles transformed into extremely hot plasma and manage to confine the entire process within the toroidal ring, the tokamak chamber is the core of a fusion reactor and there are several of them in the world.

Plasma is formed inside the reactor, which is a state of matter different from those we know on a daily basis, which are liquid, solid and gaseous. Visually, plasma is a fluid state similar to the gaseous state, but in which part of the particles that compose it are ionized, that is, they are electrically charged, that is why it is also said that plasma is an ionized gas, plasma is very abundant in the universe, it is the state in which matter is found in stars, it can be composed of any element and it does not necessarily have to be hot, but for the fusion process that interests us, the plasma has to be made of hydrogen and be at extremely high temperatures.

The temperatures are so enormous that there is no solid material in the universe capable of containing it, any structure you can imagine, be it concrete, steel, titanium, whatever, any material when it comes into contact with the plasma would melt, but then how to contain so much energy because the trick of scientists to contain so much heat is to use another energy, a very powerful one, magnetism and that is what a tokamak does, the hydrogen transforms into an ultra hot plasma, but this plasma does not escape, it remains floating inside the ring confined in the tokamak by the magnetic fields generated by very powerful magnets to which a super cooling technology is added so that they do not melt.

Scientists in this way try to achieve a fine balance between energies and maintain it as long as possible, the Chinese program is located in a physics research center in Chengdu, it managed to generate its first plasma on December 4, 2020 and although it has now reached this record of 120 million degrees, its creators have designed it to reach 150 million degrees Celsius, which is a temperature 8 times higher than that which exists in the core of the sun, with this they intend to achieve the fusion of hydrogen and obtain enormous amounts of energy.

Imagining a future in which each city had its own sun, without depending on polluting energy sources that were limited or located in territories that are now the cause of wars or disputes between nations, fusion uses hydrogen that can be extracted from water, fusion acts on a few atoms in the same way that a small amount of uranium is used to supply a fission plant, a small amount of hydrogen is enough to supply a fusion reactor and we are talking about hydrogen, so the reserves are practically unlimited.

This will really open the doors of space exploration for us, on Mars or the moons of Jupiter, we are not going to find any oil, or coal, some hydrocarbons may be found but we would need oxygen to burn them but the little oxygen that we could find would be necessary to what will breathe future explorers, nowadays spaceships also have solar energy, but this is getting weaker the further we go from the sun, on a cold Tuesday it would take an enormous amount of materials to create fields of solar panels in order to supply a colony and although there is wind on Mars, its thin atmosphere makes its thrust and therefore its ability to generate energy very scarce, however, hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, colonies and bases could be supplied with energy thanks to fusion reactors and ships could be equipped with fusion reactors to feed energy rgy to futuristic engines.

The best thing is that it is not a dream, nor a very distant future, it is something that is very close, there are only a few years left until we achieve it and create our own sun, it will be an unlocked achievement that will make us advance towards another level of civilization.

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