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“We are interested in looking at how much of that deuterium and tritium, that should be used as fuel, is instead getting stuck in the tungsten tiles, and how deeply it is trapped in the tile,” Taylor said.įrom a regulatory point of view, operators are limited to a certain amount of deuterium and tritium in a facility. That’s an inefficiency in the process and a possible safety issue. A fusion reactor produces neutrons, which can penetrate deep into the walls and create a pathway for the deuterium and tritium to follow. A fusion reactor heats that gas to extremely high temperatures and compresses it with magnets.īut some of the material leaks out and slams into the tungsten armor tiles that line the walls inside of the donut-shaped reactor. If the same amount of energy could be released gradually in a controlled manner, fusion could live up to its promise.įusion also leads to radiation damage on plant systems and some radioactive waste, and will also initially have high operating costs.įusion uses these isotopes in a plasma, a kind of flowing gas that responds to electric fields, like the gas in fluorescent lights. The hydrogen bomb is based on an uncontrolled fusion reaction. Controlling a fusion reaction has proved difficult. That’s actually what makes fusion so challenging.”īut fusion has some drawbacks. Simply, if anything goes wrong, the fusion reaction will stop. “It’s not that it’s engineered to be safe, it’s just the physics of fusion. Even in the most remote possibility,” Taylor said.

Another benefit to fusion is that a fusion reactor cannot have a runaway catastrophic nuclear event, like a meltdown. Although it has a small fraction of the element, fusion fuel fills our oceans, giving us a limitless fuel supply.

(Isotopes are variations of a chemical element with different numbers of neutrons in the nucleus.) The supply of fusion fuel is virtually unlimited deuterium can be found in seawater and tritium can be produced during the fusion reaction during contact with lithium. It’s what powers the sun.Ī fusion reactor uses hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium, as fuel. Artistic rendering of nuclear fusion reactor, which reaches temperatures hotter than the sun.įusion, a separate process, is a nuclear reaction where atomic nuclei of low mass fuse to form a heavier nucleus with an accompanying release of energy. Large scale plants have high initial capital investment and its waste products require very long-term storage if recycling efforts are not employed. It is well understood, and advanced fission reactor systems can further amplify its benefits in smaller packages with even stronger safety performance than current designs.įission reactor systems can be dangerous when poorly-designed or -managed, as events in Chernobyl and Fukushima have shown. It provides very reliable, low emission energy, is long-lasting, and has the lowest annual mortality rate of any energy resource. The energy produced by the reaction heats water, which produces steam to turn turbines and ultimately produce electricity.įission has many advantages. Nuclear fission releases heat energy by splitting atoms. The plants rely on either fossil fuels, nuclear fission or renewable sources like hydro to turn the turbines.įission powers today’s electricity-producing nuclear reactors. Power plants generate electricity by converting mechanical power, like the rotation of a turbine into electrical power. He is hard at work solving some of the problems that will make a commercially viable fusion reactor possible. Nuclear engineer Chase Taylor is a senior staff scientist with Idaho National Laboratory, a nuclear research facility. That will prove the concept of an economically viable alternative contributor to the electric grid. Yet, in 2025, scientists plan to fire up the first fusion reactor slated to produce more energy than it takes to run it. Although studied since the 1920s, scientists have yet to overcome technological issues and the economics of this process that promises to deliver energy in the future. Nuclear fusion is viewed by many as the holy grail of clean, renewable energy.