Fusion News: Brantford Expositor- Eduction Needed Over Fusion’s Possibilities
Nuclear energy is here to stay but through fusion power it can be used to create clean, safe and unlimited amounts of energy. There are two forms of attempts to harness fusion energy magnetic confinement and inertial confinement.
In magnetic confinement, we use powerful magnetic fields to confine and compress hydrogen to create the conditions for a fusion reaction to occur. This has had some measure of success with fusion happening in the reactor chamber, but only for short periods of time. More recently, we have seen success with the inertial confinement process. Here, we take a pellet of hydrogen and zap it with exceptionally powerful laser beams from all sides. This concentration of energy compresses the pellet of hydrogen and initiates the fusion reaction.
As reported by the Brantford Expositor in the article, “Education Needed Over Fusion’s Possibilities:”
Recently at the National Ignition Facility at the Livermore labs in California, an important milestone was reached – more energy was produced by the fusion reaction than was used to confine the fuel. While this may sound significant, and it is, it is still a long way from achieving a practical nuclear fusion power plant. While the process created more energy than was used to confine and ignite the fuel, the fuel only absorbed about 1% of the 1.8 mega-joules of energy from the 192 lasers that focused energy on the pellet so the process is a long way from being self-sustaining, but it is a significant milestone.
Fusion power promises a safe, clean power source that will revolutionize our society if we can work through the technical problems of engineering and building such a plant. As well, we have to educate people who have been conditioned to hate anything to do with nuclear power. In the long run, that may be the harder challenge.
