Nuclear Fusion
Imagine a world that is powered on renewable energy, energy that doesn’t hurt the environment, energy that is green. Nuclear Fusion will lead us to, a world running on green energy.
What is Nuclear Fusion?
Nuclear Fusion, as you might know, is a potentially game changing form to harness energy. Before I get into how Nuclear Fusion works, ill get into various other forms of working tech we have today to harness energy. Today, we have three main methods to harness energy, fossil fuels, nuclear and renewable energy. Fossil Fueled Energy is energy that relies on burning fossil fuels to harness energy, this is very cost effective, however, is very harmful to the environment. Nuclear energy is a better option than Fossil fuels, however, a plant can only last for a certain amount of time which has lots of nuclear waste we need to dispose of properly. This waste can take up to hundreds of years to decompose. Renewable energy is energy that is reusable and has little to no negative impacts on the environment, this is the ideal type of energy we want to run our lives on. Nuclear Fusion is a way where we can harness energy and only have to release hydrogens particles which have virtually zero impact on the surrounding environment.
How does Nuclear Fusion Work?
Nuclear Fusion is essentially creating a little sun on earth. Nuclear Fusion is what the sun uses to create its energy which we are exposed to on earth. The sun creates energy when hydrogen atoms collide and fuse into a helium atom. This process only occurs when two atoms are moving at extremely high speeds which is achieves through extremely high pressure or heat. This process is called proton-proton chain reaction which results the release of a large amount of energy. The movement of these atoms occur on the sun due to its large mass causing the core to put pressure on the energy along with the energy that is created which provides heat, also increasing the speed of these atoms creating a chain reaction. This is why the sun will eventually die out, because all the hydrogen atoms will run out, however, we still have a good 5 billion years.
How can we create energy using nuclear fusion on earth?
Since we live on earth, hydrogen atoms don't move around at the speeds the sun achieves meaning that we would have to create an environment capable of reaching these standards. Currently, we have two main types of reactors that can achieve this, tokamak and inertial confinement (ICF) reactors. A tokamak reactor had a vacuum chamber that is shaped like the insides of a doughnut. The inside of the chamber would contain a gas form of hydrogen atoms which would be put in extreme heat and pressure which would covert the hydrogen into plasma which is a energized gas format. Then, the plasma can be controlled by magnetic coil that has been placed throughout the vessel. The plasma is pushed away from the vessel walls and air and unwanted gasses are removes from the chamber. Then, an electric pulse is sent through the plasma causing the atoms to become ionized. The plasma begin to heat up and collide eventually reaching fusion temperature which was 150 to 300 million °C which results in atoms fusing into helium.
An ICF reactor works with the use of lasers. The ICF reactors use a chamber with powerful lasers that would heat the hydrogen until it is powerful enough to fuse into a helium atom. Nuclear Fusion is nearly all based off of Einstein's formula, E =mc².
Why does this matter?
Nuclear Fusion is extremely important for the survival and development of humanity. As we know, we are slowly running out of our nonrenewable resources like coal. If we start to use nuclear fusion, we would be able to use this energy for hundred of years, maybe even thousands due to the abundance of the needed materials. As time goes on, our environment is being heavily damaged and Nuclear Fusion is what we can do to prevent all of this.
Here is why Nuclear Fusion is the energy source that will shape the future.