Deuterium and tritium are plentiful in nature, and could be used to generate a practical source of energy based on nuclear fusion
“I would like nuclear fusion to become a practical power source,” he said. “It would provide an inexhaustible supply of energy, without pollution or global warming.”
Scientists in the English village of Culham near Oxford announced a major breakthrough in February 2017: they generated 59 megajoules of fusion energy for five seconds in a giant donut-shaped machine called a tokamak.
Nuclear power used today is created by a different process, called fission, which relies on splitting, rather than fusing, atoms. For tens of thousands of years, the waste produced by that process can remain radioactive. It is potentially hazardous in the event of an accident, such as the 2011 Fukushima Disaster in Japan.
He said the tokamak can power one house for a day, and that it can be done by using a wind turbine.
It’s one of many hurdles that generations of fusion energy seekers have managed to overcome. Scientists and engineers designed giant magnets to create a strong magnetic field to keep the heat bottled up. Anything else would be melted.
According to the CEO of EUROfusion, a sustained fusion process using the same fuel mix is possible for the first time.
The project was carried out in partnership with the UK Atomic Energy Authority and was led by EUROfusion. The European Commission gave money.
Both deuterium and tritium are found in nature. Deuterium is abundant in both fresh and saltwater — the deuterium from just 500 milliliters of water, with a little tritium, could power a house for a year. Tritium is rare, but it can be synthetically produced. At the moment, only 20 kilograms of it exist in the world, and demand amounts to no more than 400 grams per year. But at a yield of 8 million to 1, only tiny amounts of both elements are required to generate a lot of fusion energy.
The Last Hurrah for ITER – The Nuclear Fusion Facility at the Joint Experiment (JET) in South East Lancashire
“These landmark results have taken us a huge step closer to conquering one of the biggest scientific and engineering challenges of them all,” said Ian Chapman, CEO of the UK Atomic Energy Authority.
But ITER’s goal isn’t to actually use the energy for power but to prove that it can sustain fusion energy for much longer than JET was able to. fusion will be possible in the future if the machines are successful.
It is very difficult to harness nuclear fusion. Scientists use magnetic fields to hold the fuel in the reactor if they don’t have protection. These magnetic fields are essentially force fields that protect the surrounding material. Unfortunately, the heated deuterium makes its own magnetic fields, which interfere with the force fields. fusion was generated by the JET facility. The extreme heat and pressure generated by the reaction means this is likely to be the JET’s last hurrah. It’s not likely that it will be used again.
Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France — A milestone moment in the history of nuclear fusion on Earth and in the sun
Those actions need to have hope of containing warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in order to have any chance of saving the planet.
An energy output of 59 million joules is an impressive number, but to give it some context, this is only enough to power a typical American house for about half a day. This recent accomplishment will not be a new power plant in the short term, however it is still a positive development for a world that is hungry for energy and concerned about the dangers associated with power generation.
Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France — From a small hill in the southern French region of Provence, you can see two suns. One has been blazing for four-and-a-half billion years and is setting. The other is being built by thousands of human minds and hands, and is — far more slowly — rising. An enormous construction site that could solve the biggest crisis in human history can be seen over the other, because the last of the real sun’s evening rays cast a magical glow.
It is here, in the tiny commune of Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, that 35 countries have come together to try and master nuclear fusion, a process that occurs naturally in the sun — and all stars — but is painfully difficult to replicate on Earth.
Atomic experts rarely like to estimate when fusion energy may be widely available, often joking that, no matter when you ask, it’s always 30 years away.
It was only enough to power one house for a day, and more energy went into the process than came out of it. Yet it was a truly historic moment. It proved that nuclear fusion was indeed possible to sustain on Earth.
The Bigot Project: Making the Most of the Internet: Restoring the Vitality of the Earth in the Presence of the Torkamak
The people working on the project are undergoing a major change after the success in the UK, despite the huge sense of momentum at ITER. Their director general, Bernard Bigot (pronounced bi-GOH in French), died from illness on May 14 after leading ITER for seven years.
Before he died, Bigot shared his infectious optimism from his sunny office, which overlooked the tokamak, a futuristic structure still under construction.
Not anymore. The following population explosion happened after the Industrial Revolution. We’ve done a lot of harm to the environment because we embraced fossil fuels. He said that we were strong and in the middle of a climate crisis.
“There is no alternative but to wean ourselves off our current main power source,” he said. The best option seems to have been used for billions of years.
By raising temperatures inside the tokamak to unfathomably high levels, the particles from the fuel are forced to fuse into one. The process creates lighter-weight versions of the parts they were originally made of.
The missing mass converts to an enormous amount of energy. The neutrons, which are able to escape the plasma, then hit a “blanket” lining the walls of the tokamak, and their kinetic energy transfers as heat. That heat can be used to warm water, create steam and turn turbines to generate power.
99% of the universe is made of plasm, including our stars, our sun and all interstellar matter. Down on Earth, it can be seen in television and neon lights, and we can witness it in lightning.
The Tokamak, Eiffel Towers and the Nuclear Fusion Climate (Nasa’s Next-Generation Experiment)
The project is aiming to produce a 10-fold increase in return on energy, and will utilize newer magnets that can last much longer.
Tritium is an exceptionally pricey substance: a single gram is currently worth around $30,000. Should nuclear fusion take off, demand will go through the roof, presenting the world’s fusion masters with yet another challenge.
Across 39 building sites, construction is incredibly complex. The main worksite is a markedly sterile environment, where tremendous components are being put into place with the help of 750-ton cranes. The shell of the tokamak has been installed, but the workers still have parts to finish, including a giant magnet from Russia.
The dimensions are mind-blowing. The tokamak will ultimately weigh 23,000 tons. The Eiffel towers have a combined weight of more than 50 metric tons. It will comprise a million components, further differing into no fewer than 10 million smaller parts.
The magnets will be the largest ever created. Their large size means they are not able to be transported and must be assembled in a giant hall.
Even the digital design of this machine sits across 3D computer files that take up more than two terabytes of drive space. 160 million pages of Word documents could be saved if you saved the same amount of space.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/05/world/iter-nuclear-fusion-climate-intl-cnnphotos/
ITER – a project of peace and stability in the post-war world. The impact of Russia on the project and on the cooperation spirit
The seven main members of the ITER are China, the United States, Europe, Russia, India, Japan and South Korea. It looks a little bit like the UN Security Council, though Bigot tried hard to keep politics out of ITER.
Concerns over the country’s continued role in ITER and the potential exclusion are both present, as Russia tries to change Europe’s map and challenge the post-war world order.
The European Commission made an exception for the ITER project in its sanctions, despite Russia being cut out of a number of international scientific projects.
The collaborative spirit has never been affected by the latest Russia circumstances. I think it is not an exaggeration to say that ITER is a project of peace,” he said.
Our commitment is as strong as ever. I can say that, from the beginning of my involvement with the project, daily politics has had virtually no impact on our endeavors,” he said.
The partners are aware that dropping the ball could kill the project. This, of course, is a tremendous responsibility.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/05/world/iter-nuclear-fusion-climate-intl-cnnphotos/
The ITER Project: Iter nuclear fusion climate impact on the Earth and the late Stephen Hawking as a physicist
Building started as diplomacy and technology fell into step. In 2010, the foundations were laid, and in 2014, the first construction machines were switched on.
The scale and ambition of the ITER project may seem enormous, but it is, at the very least, a proportional response to the mess humans have made of the planet. Since 1973, global energy usage has more than doubled. By the end of the century, it might actually triple. Seventy percent of all carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere are created through humans’ energy consumption. Fossil fuels account for 80% of the energy we consume.
Now, the Earth is barreling toward levels of warming that translate into more frequent and deadly heat waves, famine-inducing droughts, wildfires, floods and rising sea levels. The impacts of the climate crisis are getting harder and harder to reverse as entire ecosystems reach tipping points and more human lives are put on the line.
When the late physicist Stephen Hawking was asked by Time in 2010 which scientific discovery he would like to see in his lifetime, he pointed to exactly this process.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/05/world/iter-nuclear-fusion-climate-intl-cnnphotos/
The US Energy Secretary’s big breakthrough for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) project: Accelerating an atomic reactor with laser-powered atoms
The European Union is footing 45% of the project’s ever-mounting construction costs. All the other participant countries are contributing a little over 9% each, by rough estimations. The total construction was thought to be around 6 billion euros. At the moment, the total has tripled to around 20 billion euros.
Expectations were revised to be more realistic under his leadership. The first deuture-tritium experiments, which were supposed to happen in 2035, are currently under review because of the persistent supply chain issues.
His car was often parked until 9 or 10 p.m. at night, according to Coblentz. “So you always had the impression that no detail was too large or too small for him to take seriously and be involved in.”
A “major scientific breakthrough” will be announced by the US Energy Secretary on Tuesday. The breakthrough was reported by the Financial Times.
The National Ignition Facility project creates energy from nuclear fusion by what’s known as “thermonuclear inertial fusion.” In practice, US scientists fire pellets that contain a hydrogen fuel into an array of nearly 200 lasers, essentially creating a series of extremely fast, repeated explosions at the rate of 50 times per second.
The machine that makes the reaction needs to go through some serious heat. The sun’s core is at least 10 times hotter than the Earth’s.
Whether it’s using magnets or shooting pellets with lasers, the result is ultimately the same: Heat sustained by the process of fusing the atoms together holds the key to helping produce energy.
The Physics of the Future: The Case for a Success of the Science but a Long Way From providing useful Energy to the Production of Electricity
Chittenden said they are spending a huge amount of time and money on every experiment. “We need to bring the cost down by a huge factor.”
“The opposing argument is that this result is miles away from actual energy gain required for the production of electricity,” he said. “Therefore, we can say (it) is a success of the science but a long way from providing useful energy.”
We will learn more about a major scientific breakthrough by the National Nuclear Security Administration tomorrow during a livestream.
The experts of the national laboratory will be present for a Q&A after the press conference. That discussion will also be livestreamed at energy.gov/live and is scheduled to start at 10:30AM ET.