if fusion power were harnesed today, the abundant energy that results would probably sustain and even...

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if fusion power were harnesed today, the abundant energy thatresults would probably sustain and even further encourage ourpresent appetite for continued growth and in a relatively fewdoubling times produce an appreciable fraction of solar power inputto earth. make an argument that the current delay in harnessingfusion is a blessing for the human race

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Fusion reactors have long been touted as the perfect energy source Proponents claim that when useful commercial fusion reactors are developed they would produce vast amounts of energy with little radioactive waste forming little or no plutonium byproducts that could be used for nuclear weapons These profusion advocates also say that fusion reactors would be incapable of generating the dangerous runaway chain reactions that lead to a meltdownall drawbacks to the current fission schemes in nuclear power plants And like fission a fusionpowered nuclear reactor would have the enormous benefit of producing energy without emitting any carbon to warm up our planets atmosphere But there is a hitch While it is relatively speaking rather straightforward to split an atom to produce energy which is what happens in fission it is a grand scientific challenge to fuse two hydrogen nuclei together to create helium isotopes as occurs in fusion Our sun constantly does fusion reactions all the time burning ordinary hydrogen at enormous densities and temperatures But to replicate that process of fusion here on Earthwhere we dont have the intense pressure created by the gravity of the suns corewe would need a temperature of at least 100 million degrees Celsius or about six times hotter than the sun In experiments to date the energy input required to produce the temperatures and pressures that enable significant fusion reactions in hydrogen isotopes has far exceeded the fusion energy generated But through the use of promising fusion technologies such as magnetic confinement and laserbased inertial confinement humanity is moving much closer to getting around that problem and achieving that breakthrough moment when the amount of energy coming out of a fusion reactor will sustainably exceed the amount going in producing net energy Collaborative multinational physics projects in this area include the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor ITER joint fusion experiment in France which broke ground for its first support structures in 2010with the first experiments on its fusion machine or tokamak expected to begin in 2025 As we move closer to our goal however it is time to ask Is fusion really a perfect energy source Scaling down the sun As noted above fusion reactions in the sun burn ordinary hydrogen at enormous density and temperature sustained by an effectively infinite confinement time and the reaction products are benign helium isotopes Artificial terrestrial fusion schemes on the other hand are restricted to much lower particle densities and much more fleeting energy confinement and are therefore compelled to use the heavier neutronrich isotopes of hydrogen known as deuterium and tritiumwhich are 24 orders of magnitude more reactive than ordinary hydrogen Think of the numeral one with 24 zeroes after it This gargantuan advantage in fusion reactivity allows humanmade fusion assemblies to be workable with a billion times lower particle density and a trillion times poorer energy confinement than the levels that the sun enjoys Consequently the proponents of fusion reactors claim that when they are developed fusion reactors will constitute a perfect energy source that will share none of the significant drawbacks of the muchmaligned fission reactors But unlike what happens in solar fusionwhich uses ordinary hydrogenEarthbound fusion reactors that burn neutronrich isotopes have byproducts that are anything but harmless Energetic neutron streams comprise 80 percent of the fusion energy output of deuteriumtritium reactions and 35 percent of deuteriumdeuterium reactions Now an energy source consisting of 80 percent energetic neutron streams may be the perfect neutron source but its truly bizarre that it would ever be hailed as the ideal electrical energy source In fact these neutron streams lead directly to four regrettable problems with See Answer

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