Last year, the UK government announced their plans for a fully working fusion reactor by 2040. However, things could be about to change. “The biggest challenge isn’t about the science, but the fact that scientists have to now deliver something in a practical sense,” says Andrew Storer, chief executive of the UK's Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre. Fusion is an engineering challenge, rather than a scientific one. We understand how fusion operates in ideal conditions. The promise is eternal, but fusion always seems that same distance away.
This claim, and many others since, have repeatedly failed to be achieved. As far back as 1955, the physicist Homi J Bhabha claimed we would have fusion power within two decades. For this, it would need to generate more power than is needed to keep the fusion reaction going.įor decades, we have been promised that commercial fusion power plants will exist within 30 years. The challenge is turning these experimental reactors into an ongoing process that is commercially viable. Test reactors, such as the Joint European Torus (Jet) at Culham in England, have proved fusion is possible, albeit for short periods of time. Fusion therefore offers the tantalising potential for near-limitless, climate-friendly energy production that doesn’t come with a shadow of radioactive waste. Neutron bombardment causes a fusion plant to become slightly radioactive, however these radioactive products are short-lived. This means there is far less harmful waste created by fusion. Unlike nuclear fission, which breaks heavy atoms apart, nuclear fusion compresses light atoms together. The countries building miniature nuclear reactors.
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The plasma is compressed, using magnets for example, to fuse the hydrogen isotopes together, producing helium and high-speed neutrons that shoot outwards. This creates plasma, which is a fourth state of matter. Sadly for any modern-day alchemists, due to the vast amounts of energy needed to kickstart fusion reactions between atoms, attempts to harness fusion on Earth need lightweight elements to work, so gold will not be a byproduct.įusion reactors operate by superheating hydrogen isotopes to over 15 million degrees Centigrade, which is as hot as the Sun. Fusion and alchemy, therefore, are more closely linked than people realise. What they did not realise at the time was that heavy elements, such as gold, were actually created by fusion – albeit fusion in dying stars that exploded, scattering material into space. What kept the alchemists going was the knowledge that since gold clearly did exist, it had to have been created somehow.
Just as alchemists spent decades of their lives trying to turn other metals into gold, fusion is the process that allows lightweight atomic nuclei to combine to form a heavier nucleus, creating a different chemical element. In many ways, fusion shares characteristics with alchemy. Replicating this process in a fusion reactor here on Earth, however, is complex and presents significant engineering challenges. The stars, including our Sun, are giant self-sustaining fusion reactors.įusion in a star operates by intense gravitational forces compressing matter together, forcing atoms to fuse and become heavier, releasing energy as they do so. The science of nuclear fusion was proven in the early 1930s, after fusion of hydrogen isotopes was achieved in a laboratory.
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