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nucler
any one able to help me gather data on thermo nuclear funsion?
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The release of nuclear energy can occur at the low end of the binding energy curve (see accompanying chart) through the fusion of two light nuclei into a heavier one. The energy radiated by stars, including the Sun, arises from such fusion reactions deep in their interiors. At the enormous pressure and at temperatures above 15 million ° C (27 million ° F) existing there, hydrogen nuclei combine according to equation (1) and give rise to most of the energy released by the Sun.
Nuclear fusion was first achieved on earth in the early 1930s by bombarding a target containing deuterium, the mass-2 isotope of hydrogen, with high-energy deuterons in a cyclotron (see Particle Accelerators). To accelerate the deuteron beam a great deal of energy is required, most of which appeared as heat in the target. As a result, no net useful energy was produced. In the 1950s the first large-scale but uncontrolled release of fusion energy was demonstrated in the tests of thermonuclear weapons by the United States, the USSR, the United Kingdom, and France. This was such a brief and uncontrolled release that it could not be used for the production of electric power.
In the fission reactions discussed earlier, the neutron, which has no electric charge, can easily approach and react with a fissionable nucleus—for example, uranium-235. In the typical fusion reaction, however, the reacting nuclei both have a positive electric charge, and the natural repulsion between them, called Coulomb repulsion, must be overcome before they can join. This occurs when the temperature of the reacting gas is sufficiently high—50 to 100 million ° C (90 to 180 million ° F). In a gas of the heavy hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium at such temperature, the fusion reaction
occurs, releasing about 17.6 MeV per fusion event. The energy appears first as kinetic energy of the helium-4 nucleus and the neutron, but is soon transformed into heat in the gas and surrounding materials.
Nuclear Binding Energy
Nuclear Binding Energy
The amount of energy required to remove a single proton or neutron from an atomic nucleus varies with the mass of the nucleus. The graph of this relationship is called the binding energy curve.
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If the density of the gas is sufficient—and at these temperatures the density need be only 10-5 atm, or almost a vacuum—the energetic helium-4 nucleus can transfer its energy to the surrounding hydrogen gas, thereby maintaining the high temperature and allowing subsequent fusion reactions, or a fusion chain reaction, to take place. Under these conditions, “nuclear ignition” is said to have occurred.
The basic problems in attaining useful nuclear fusion conditions are (1) to heat the gas to these very high temperatures and (2) to confine a sufficient quantity of the reacting nuclei for a long enough time to permit the release of more energy than is needed to heat and confine the gas. A subsequent major problem is the capture of this energy and its conversion to electricity.
At temperatures of even 100,000° C (180,000° F), all the hydrogen atoms are fully ionized. The gas consists of an electrically neutral assemblage of positively charged nuclei and negatively charged free electrons. This state of matter is called a plasma.
Tokamak Fusion Reactor
In 1993 scientists at the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor, at Princeton University’s plasma physics laboratory in New Jersey, produced a controlled fusion reaction, during which the temperature in the reactor surpassed three times that of the core of the sun. In a tokamak reactor, massive magnets confine hydrogen plasma under extremely high temperatures and pressures, forcing the hydrogen nuclei to fuse. When atomic nuclei are forced together in nuclear fusion, the reaction releases an extraordinary amount of energy.
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A plasma hot enough for fusion cannot be contained by ordinary materials. The plasma would cool very rapidly, and the vessel walls would be destroyed by the extreme heat. However, since the plasma consists of charged nuclei and electrons, which move in tight spirals around the lines of force of strong magnetic fields, the plasma can be contained in a properly shaped magnetic field region without reacting with material walls.
In any useful fusion device, the energy output must exceed the energy required to confine and heat the plasma. This condition can be met when the product of confinement time t and plasma density n exceeds about 1014. The relationship tn≥ 1014 is called the Lawson criterion.
Numerous schemes for the magnetic confinement of plasma have been tried since 1950 in the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, Japan, and elsewhere. Thermonuclear reactions have been observed, but the Lawson number rarely exceeded 1012. One device, however—the tokamak, originally suggested in the USSR by Igor Tamm and Andrey Sakharov—began to give encouraging results in the early 1960s.
Target Chamber of the National Ignition Facility
Target Chamber of the National Ignition Facility
A technician stands inside the target chamber of the National Ignition Facility, the most powerful laser in the world. The NIF is part of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. When the device is in use, multiple laser beams converge from all sides on a small fuel sample at the center of the chamber, heating and compressing the fuel to produce a fusion reaction. The laser is currently used for nuclear weapons research and to explore the use of fusion as a possible energy source.
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The confinement chamber of a tokamak has the shape of a torus, with a minor diameter of about 1 m (about 3.3 ft) and a major diameter of about 3 m (about 9.8 ft). A toroidal (donut-shaped) magnetic field of about 50,000 gauss is established inside this chamber by large electromagnets. A longitudinal current of several million amperes is induced in the plasma by the transformer coils that link the torus. The resulting magnetic field lines, spirals in the torus, stably confine the plasma.
Based on the successful operation of small tokamaks at several laboratories, two large devices were built in the early 1980s, one at Princeton University in the United States and one in the USSR. The enormous magnetic fields in a tokamak subject the plasma to extremely high temperatures and pressures, forcing the atomic nuclei to fuse. As the atomic nuclei are fused together, an extraordinary amount of energy is released. During this fusion process, the temperature in the tokamak reaches three times that of the Sun’s core.
Another possible route to fusion energy is that of inertial confinement. In this concept, the fuel—tritium or deuterium—is contained within a tiny glass sphere that is then bombarded on several sides by a pulsed laser or heavy ion beam. This causes an implosion of the glass sphere, setting off a thermonuclear reaction that ignites the fuel. Several laboratories in the United States and elsewhere are currently pursuing this possibility. In the late 1990s, many researchers concentrated on the use of beams of heavy ions, such as barium ions, rather than lasers to trigger inertial-confinement fusion. Researchers chose heavy ion beams because heavy ion accelerators can produce intense ion pulses at high repetition rates and because heavy ion accelerators are extremely efficient at converting electric power into ion beam energy, thus reducing the amount of input power. Also in comparison to laser beams, ion beams can penetrate the glass sphere and fuel more effectively to heat the fuel.
Progress in fusion research has been promising, but the development of practical systems for creating a stable fusion reaction that produces more power than it consumes will probably take decades to realize. The research is expensive, as well. However, some progress was made in the early 1990s. In 1991, for the first time ever, a significant amount of energy—about 1.7 million watts—was produced from controlled nuclear fusion at the Joint European Torus (JET) Laboratory in England. In December 1993, researchers at Princeton University used the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor to produce a controlled fusion reaction that output 5.6 million watts of power. However, both the JET and the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor consumed more energy than they produced during their operation.
If fusion energy does become practical, it offers the following advantages: (1) a limitless source of fuel, deuterium from the ocean; (2) no possibility of a reactor accident, as the amount of fuel in the system is very small; and (3) waste products much less radioactive and simpler to handle than those from fission systems.
Day-om! That's long
Have fun with you FUNSION as you call it lol
I love you,
The Waffler
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