Fusion: Harnessing the Power of the Sun Essay -- physics fusion

HistoryIt has been a well-accepted fact that the sun is a seeded player of great power since the aboriginal part of this century. In 1929, scientists starting line theorized that the expertness production in stars was created by alinement nuclear replys involving light elements reacting to roll heavier elements. By the late thirties, H. Bethe had analyzed most of our suns nuclear fusion cycle. conjugation in our sun is ca utilise when deuterium and tritium, both Hydrogen isotopes, react (in the bearing of large amounts of heat) to form Helium, energy, and an extra neutron. Man-made fusion reactions were thought to be impossible until the first uncontrolled fusion reactions were witnessed when nuclear bombs known as George and Mike were detonated in 1951 and 1952, respectively. Efforts to control fusion energy began in the 1950s. By 1955 scientists had witnessed the enormity of the task. A successful fusion reaction would not unless require temperatures in excess of 50x106 K, but would also need to be isolated for a long enough time so the reaction could produce more energy than required to begin the reaction. The most promising fuels for fusion reactions are deuterium, and tritium. heavy hydrogen and tritium both are hydrogen isotopes. Deuterium is a stable isotope and is naturally found in water, while tritium is truly unstable, radioactive, and must be man-made. Several methods for containment exist. They include the Tokamak generator, inertial containment, and mirror confinement. The TokamakProblems with early power plants led to the development of the Tokamak. An old design, known as the bilinear pinch method, suffered from large energy losses at the ends of the plant and macroscopical plasma instabilities. To overcome these problems, a new design ... ...llion degrees, the fuel ignites and fusion occurs. The reaction then spreads through the compressed capsule, producing energy several propagation greater than what was deposited by the putz s.The majority of research so far involving this example of fusion has dealt with laser beams. These powerful flashes of light, with varied wavelengths and duration, are focused on the capsule to initiate fusion. However, our modern lasers are very inefficient. To be used in a commercial fusion plant, laser technology would first have to greatly improve. Another option in Inertial task is ion beams instead of lasers. The ion beams are much more efficient, but are gloss over very experimental. The biggest problem is the beams short span. An intense enough beam to generate the reaction only lasts about 10 nanoseconds. To compensate, scientists must compress the beam and make it stronger.