We have endless energy, but why haven't we used it yet?

Nuclear fusion is the opposite of the reaction inside atomic energy plants, which can produce endless energy.

Why still have not used endless energy sources from nuclear fusion

Nuclear fusion is the energy of the sun and stars - releasing a huge source of energy by attaching light elements together, such as hydrogen and helium. If this synthetic energy is exploited directly on Earth, it can provide an endless source of clean energy, using seawater as the main source of oil without creating greenhouse gases, without an increased risk. fast, and there is no danger of facing catastrophic accidents.

The amount of radioactive waste generated is very low and indirect, mainly from the neutron activation of the nucleus. With current technologies, a nuclear power plant can be reused within 100 years before being shut down.

Nuclear power plants today harness energy from nuclear fission - the nuclear division of heavy atoms such as uranium, thorium and plutonium to become smaller daughter nuclei.
JointEuropeanTorus

This process arises in unstable elements, and it can be exploited to generate electricity, but it also creates a long-standing source of radioactive waste .

So why haven't we used clean and safe energy from nuclear fusion ? Although studies in this area have achieved major breakthroughs, why do physicists still place great doubts on a project that is considered 'the breakthrough of humanity'?

The short answer is, it is extremely difficult to achieve the standard to maintain this reaction . But if ongoing tests can be successful, we can be optimistic about nuclear synthesis energy to appear in the near future.

Unlike nuclear particles , the nucleus does not automatically undergo synthesis: the nuclei are positively charged and must overcome their enormous electrostatic forces before they reach close enough to the nuclear force. The role of attaching nuclei together is effective.

In nature, the massive gravity of stars is large enough that their temperature, density and volume maintain their synthesis through the 'quantum channels ' of electrostatic barriers. . In the laboratory, the appearance of quantum channels is too low, and therefore, electrostatic barriers can only be overcome by increasing the temperature of the energy nuclei - making them 6-7 times hotter. the sun.

Even the most easily fused nuclear fusion reaction - the reaction of hydrogen isomers such as deuterium and tritium to form helium and an energy-carrying neutron - also requires a temperature of about 120 million degrees Celsius. At such an extremely high temperature, energy atoms break down to produce its electron and nuclear components, creating a superheated plasma.

Fixing this plasma long enough for the nuclei to blend together is a trivial feat. In the laboratory, the plasma body is confined to a strong magnetic field, formed by charged superconducting wires, thereby creating a donut-shaped 'magnetic bottle' that blocks the plasma into it.
Current plasma experiments, such as the Joint European Torus experiment, can hold plasma at temperatures for power amplification networks, but the density and time of energy confinement (plasma cooling time) is too low for it to heat itself.

But this process has taken a certain step forward - current experiments have produced reactions that are 1,000 times better in efficiency, in terms of temperature, plasma density and time of its confinement, compared with experiments 40 years ago. And now we have ideas that are not bad for speeding up the process.

System changes

The ITER reactor, currently under construction at Cadarache in southern France, will discover the 'plasma combustion system ', the system in which plasma heat is generated by detained products generated by antiparticles. Nuclear applications will exceed foreign thermal energy. The energy gained from ITER will be more than 5 times more than the thermal energy in adjacent projects, and will appear in 10-30 times shorter.

With costs in excess of US $ 20 billion and funded by a seven-nation alliance with other allies, ITER is the largest scientific project on the planet . Its purpose is to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of using nuclear energy for peaceful purposes such as generating electricity.

The challenge for engineers and physicists is enormous. ITER will own a magnetic field of about 5 Tesla (100,000 times the Earth's magnetic field), and the radius of the unit is about 6m, containing about 840 plasma cubes next to 6m (1/3 of an Olympic standard swimming pool length) It weighs an estimated 23 tons and contains about 100,000 kilometers of niobium superconducting fiber, which will be immersed into a cooling device thanks to liquid helium to keep the superconducting wires in the heat. degrees are only a few degrees above absolute zero.

ITER is expected to start producing the first plasmas in 2020. But plasma burning experiments are still not ready to start until 2027. One of the great challenges to overcome is observation. whether these self-reliant plasmas can be created and stabilized without damaging the surface walls, (or the goals of 'deflecting' extremely high heat currents).

What comes from the construction and operation of ITER will help design future nuclear synthesis plants , with the ultimate goal of using technology for energy generation. At this point, it seems that its prototypes will begin to be built in the 2030s, and will be able to generate about 1 gigawatt of electricity .

The first generation of nuclear synthesis plants will be much larger than ITER, and it is expected that improvements in detention and magnetic control will lead to greater efficiency. As such, they will have lower costs than ITER, as well as prospects for longer life and lower environmental impacts.
Challenges are still there, and costs are always in heaven. All we need to do is start working to quickly end the nightmare of energy crisis and environmental pollution.