image by Knoxnews
Above is a computer rendered image of the design being used by the team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in their project, The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.
Nuclear fusion is the source of the power for most of the universe. Our sun employs nuclear fusion to create its heat, which we use to live. We have found that nuclear fission creates large amounts of heat; which can then be translated into usable energy through turbines, super-heated water and such mechanisms. However, nuclear fusion lies just out of our reach, with a negative net energy gain.
“To produce power from fusion, a 100,000,000-degree gas, a ‘plasma,’ must be confined by magnetic fields … This field is produced by electric coils. The figure shows the coils and plasma for ITER, the large facility being built by the major powers of the world in France. Computer simulations for the ITER magnetic fields are helping engineers and scientists understand how bumpy fields change plasma temperatures. Bumpy fields (fewer coils) are simpler and cheaper, but reduce temperature and fusion power.” - ORNL’s own Lee Berry.
The task of creating a reactor which has a positive net energy gain is quite a task indeed, and also a feat which has not been achieved to a commercial scale. We hope that someday we can achieve this as the energy produced by a fusion reaction is three to four times greater than that of fission, and along with this, there are few radioactive particles released as products in the reaction.
