A project to build a revolutionary nuclear fusion reactor, which will produce renewable energy, has reached an important milestone. Half of the infrastructure required for the ITER project is now completed seven years after the official start of construction in 2010. The ITER project could be a source of clean nuclear fusion energy by 2025 on the 180-hectare site in Saint Paul-lez-Durance in southern France.
The importance of Fusion for our future and an introduction to the ITER project. Nuclear fusion works in a manner that’s essentially the opposite of its nuclear fission cousin. A fusion reaction occurs when two light nuclei usually hydrogen isotopes produce energy. To harness this energy, however, nuclear reactors have to control extreme pressure and temperatures from the super-hot plasma that sustains the fusion reaction. Stabilizing this reaction for extended periods is what those working on nuclear fusion have been trying to achieve. To facilitate things, an international effort for joint fusion research was begun in 1985. The ITER project, which began in 2007, has 35 nations working in a 35-year long collaboration to build and operate the ITER experimental device.
The key difference with ITER is that it is designed to produce more energy from the energy needed to keep it hot.The amount of fusion energy has tokamak reactor products depends on the number of fusion reactions occurring at its core. ITER's tokamak would have 830 cubic meters of plasma volume, making it ten times larger than currently available fusion reactors. More melting energy with lesser energy for sustaining temperature, as Whyte said. From the scientific point of view, net energy is also an important threshold because the plasma is primarily driven by the energy released in the fusion reactions. So it becomes self-heating, and therefore has a higher level of self-organization according to Dennis Whyte Professor of Engineering . Assuming all goes well, we could go commercial in another 20 years.
Despite the apparent benefits of nuclear fusion, it is not without criticism. Some doubt that it will be possible to use nuclear energy efficiently and make it commercially viable. Others look at the word "nuclear" and immediately associate it with destructive use. The merger, which is so different from the fission in its deployment, should be considered separately Whyte added.
Source : https://futurism.com/
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