It’s hardly a secret that nuclear fusion has had a rough time when it comes to its image in the media: the miracle power source that is always ‘just ten years away’. Even if no self-respecting physicist would ever make such a statement, the arrival of commercial nuclear fusion power cannot come quickly enough for many. With the promise of virtually endless, clean energy with no waste, it does truly sound like something from a science-fiction story.
Meanwhile, in the world of non-fiction, generations of scientists have dedicated their careers to understanding better how plasma in a reactor behaves, how to contain it and what types of fuels would work best for a fusion reactor, especially one that has to run continuously, with a net positive energy output. In this regard, 2020 is an exciting year, with the German Wendelstein 7-X stellerator reaching its final configuration, and the Chinese HL-2M tokamak about to fire up.
Join me after the break as I look into what a century of progress in fusion research has brought us and where it will take us next.
Previously in Pursuit of Nuclear Fusion
The discovery that the total mass equivalent of four hydrogen atoms is more than that of a single helium (4He) atom was made in 1920 by British physicist Francis William Aston. This observation led to the conclusion that net energy can be released when one fuses hydrogen cores together, for example in the common deuterium (2D) tritium (3T) reaction:
Deuterium (2H, or D) is a common, stable isotope of hydrogen that occurs naturally in abundance, to the ..
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