![]() At the moment it can only be repeated once a day. The experiment lasted about 10 nanoseconds, the time it takes for light to travel 3 metres. Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California used the energy of 192 giant lasers, which fill the surface of 2 football fields (I visited it in 2012), to heat a small hydrogen sphere of a few millimetres. How long will it take to have a nuclear fusion plant? What has just happened in the USA is that, for the first time in 70 years, more energy has been obtained in a fusion experiment than the amount spent to produce it. It's like investing 50 euros to get 30 euros in total. So if what I get out of my fusion reactions is less than what I spend to heat, it's not worth it. It takes a lot of energy to heat up to 100 million degrees. Obviously this is very difficult to control. In even more concrete terms, it means heating them up to about 100 million degrees. Now, what does this need to “push” mean? If I have hydrogen atoms in front of me and I want them to fuse 2 to 2, in the real world, “pushing” means giving them enough energy to get them close enough to stick together. And when they are close enough to each other, another phenomenon arises that we were not told about at school : they stick to each other. It takes much prodding to bring them closer together. Being of the same sign, as we were told at school, they repel each other. As they approach each other to fuse, the protons see each other. Two hydrogen nuclei, for example, each consisting of a single proton. Now suppose I want to fuse two light nuclei. It goes on its quiet way until it hits the nucleus and splits it apart. neutral, the protons in the nucleus neither attract nor repel it. As the neutron approaches the nucleus it is going to split, it sees the neutrons and protons in the nucleus. That is enough to understand why fissioning is easy while fusion is not.įissioning, cutting a fat nucleus into two, is easy: just send a neutron to it. The reader may remember the following: opposite charges attract and equal charges repel. By the way, fusion is the energy source of the Sun and all other stars. Apparently, taming fusion is more difficult than taming fission. Today, 70 years later, there is still no nuclear power plant that generates electricity from fusion. The first test of an H-bomb took place in 1952. The so-called H-bomb uses this principle. The first one started producing electricity in 1954, only 9 years after the bombs. The over 420 nuclear power plants that generate electricity all over the world also use this principle. The bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 used this principle. fuse.Īmong all the phenomena that can occur between nuclei, only two types of reactions can provide energy: They can either break into pieces, or join together, i.e. The nuclei of atoms can react with each other. Īn atom is a nucleus, made of protons and neutrons, with electrons dancing around. Last Tuesday, 13 December, headline on front pages of newspapers such as El País in Spain read: “The US announces a 'historic scientific achievement' towards endless energy with nuclear fusion”.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |