(AUSTRALIAN RESEARCH IS UNLOCKING THE ENERGY OF THE STARS)
September 25, 2023
Hello everyone.
Students at a leading university in Australia are building a device capable of nuclear fusion – the process that powers stars and could unlock enormous amounts of carbon-free energy on Earth.
The magnet-powered, doughnut-shaped “tokamak” machine will be the first nuclear fusion device designed and built by students and will drive experiments aimed at bringing fusion to a commercial reality. The students will conduct experiments on superheated plasma with the machine to help industry partners accelerate fusion research. One focus will be how the machines handle plasma flares.
Fusion unleashes four million times the energy of coal, uses hydrogen as fuel, is regarded as safer than fission reactors and produces far less radioactive waste.
Nuclear fusion is the opposite of fission, which powers current reactors by splitting uranium atoms to unleash heat and radiation.
Fusion forces two atomic nuclei together instead. The atoms merge and become a different element, and the leftover atomic mass converts to astronomical amounts of energy.
It’s the same reaction that erupts in the sun’s core. In essence, nuclear fusion would bottle the power of a star.
Merging two atoms is difficult because the positive nuclei repel each other, like the same end of two magnets. The crushing gravity and immense heat of stars overcomes this repulsion and forces atoms to fuse.
A tokamak achieves fusion with magnets that whip hydrogen plasma (a charged gas) around a circular vessel and heat the gas to between 100 and 300 million degrees.
With experiments well under way, the next step will be to engineer the hardware that can maintain constant, safe, commercially viable fusion power that makes up for the massive amounts of energy used to blast a laser or fire up a tokamak. The target is to achieve 500 to 1000% more energy.
Experts say the technology won’t be developed quickly enough to help decarbonize energy grids and stop the climate crisis. Nonetheless, fusion energy could define how we power civilisation in the second half of this century. Most experts expect the technology to become commercially viable in 15-20 years.
There are endless possibilities with this technology. We need to prepare ourselves for a new nuclear society.
Nuclear fusion could transform our world as early as 2030 if research and funding are poured into this area.
A happy week to you all.
Cheers
Jacquie
