It's been far too long and that is unfortunate. It's been pretty busy hear at school, learning and such.
Oh! You're here now to learn as well? I actually knew that, and you're in luck, because as promised, today's topic is NUCLEAR FUSION. YESSSSSSSSSS.
So, you may have been under the influence that nuclear fission (discussed last post) and fusion were one in the same, and well, you'd be, completely wrong. But don't fret, you're here to learn the difference, the benefits, and small complication, that is holding us as humans back from unlimited and clean energy. Nuclear Fusion.
You may have inferred that I am pretty hyped to talk about this, and it's great timing because a German team of scientists have just taken one big step to achieving fusion.
So first of all, what is it? What's the difference to fission? Well fusion as you may have assumed from the word, gets its massive energy by fusing, or combining to elements (like hydrogen) together to form Helium. To be fair, the process isn't particularly this simple, as isotopes are involved, but we'll let that be for now. But for the sake of explanation, let's continue.
Believe it or not, you actually see a fusion reactor every day! It's massive, and bright, and appears yellow to us. Yes! It's the Sun!
The Sun generates its energy due to its immense gravity (because its so big) and fuses elements together. All this fusion generates insane amounts of energy, hence why the Sun is so hot. The Sun is so hot that it's actually not a type of matter you may normally know.
Back in highschool, you learn that there are three states to matter; solid, liquid, and gas. Well, THEY LIED. Technically there is another state, called plasma. Mmmm cool eh? Plasma is what happens when there is insanely high temperatures like the Sun. Plasma is actually also found when lightning strikes! That stream of energy is so hot that it's considered a plasma state.
Now since the temperature is required to be so high, it isn't very easy to create or even contain matter in plasma state. Even if we were to make it easily, anything it touches would melt instantly! So how can we possibly contain plasma to achieve fusion? Well, we use electromagnetic containment fields. OUUU big words. Don't worry, you actually know what it is! Ever hear of an MRI? Or when magnets repel each other? These are electromagnetic fields. We apply electricity to magnets which creates this invisible field.
Now, apart from all the issues to make plasma and contain it, fusion can only occur in certain environments. For this, the field and shape of the reactor needs to be kind of twisted. Imagine what DNA looks like, something like that. The fancy name of the reactor we are currently experimenting with is called the Stellarator.
Now, since fusion is still new, and not very close to actually providing energy, it is still an "experiment". This is what the German scientists are doing, testing and developing the Stellarator, to actually create and contain plasma to allow fusion to occur. And they did! Wooo! No one has ever achieved this before! And although they only created and contained plasma for fractions of a second, it's absolutely incredible to the future of fusion.
So, it may be another 10-15 years or more before you see major fusion reactors being built but when they are, the energy they provide will be incomparable to any other type of energy! And the best part, absolutely no down side. No nuclear radiation or fallout, no nuclear waste water, just clean, renewable, near-unlimited energy. That's the future I want to be in.
Thanks for reading, and I will try to post a little more frequently!
As mentioned, in the next few posts, I will be highlighting the more mainstream renewable energies, and some of the big names driving the cause.
Until next time,
J
Oh! You're here now to learn as well? I actually knew that, and you're in luck, because as promised, today's topic is NUCLEAR FUSION. YESSSSSSSSSS.
So, you may have been under the influence that nuclear fission (discussed last post) and fusion were one in the same, and well, you'd be, completely wrong. But don't fret, you're here to learn the difference, the benefits, and small complication, that is holding us as humans back from unlimited and clean energy. Nuclear Fusion.
You may have inferred that I am pretty hyped to talk about this, and it's great timing because a German team of scientists have just taken one big step to achieving fusion.
So first of all, what is it? What's the difference to fission? Well fusion as you may have assumed from the word, gets its massive energy by fusing, or combining to elements (like hydrogen) together to form Helium. To be fair, the process isn't particularly this simple, as isotopes are involved, but we'll let that be for now. But for the sake of explanation, let's continue.
Believe it or not, you actually see a fusion reactor every day! It's massive, and bright, and appears yellow to us. Yes! It's the Sun!
The Sun generates its energy due to its immense gravity (because its so big) and fuses elements together. All this fusion generates insane amounts of energy, hence why the Sun is so hot. The Sun is so hot that it's actually not a type of matter you may normally know.
Back in highschool, you learn that there are three states to matter; solid, liquid, and gas. Well, THEY LIED. Technically there is another state, called plasma. Mmmm cool eh? Plasma is what happens when there is insanely high temperatures like the Sun. Plasma is actually also found when lightning strikes! That stream of energy is so hot that it's considered a plasma state.
Now since the temperature is required to be so high, it isn't very easy to create or even contain matter in plasma state. Even if we were to make it easily, anything it touches would melt instantly! So how can we possibly contain plasma to achieve fusion? Well, we use electromagnetic containment fields. OUUU big words. Don't worry, you actually know what it is! Ever hear of an MRI? Or when magnets repel each other? These are electromagnetic fields. We apply electricity to magnets which creates this invisible field.
Now, apart from all the issues to make plasma and contain it, fusion can only occur in certain environments. For this, the field and shape of the reactor needs to be kind of twisted. Imagine what DNA looks like, something like that. The fancy name of the reactor we are currently experimenting with is called the Stellarator.
Now, since fusion is still new, and not very close to actually providing energy, it is still an "experiment". This is what the German scientists are doing, testing and developing the Stellarator, to actually create and contain plasma to allow fusion to occur. And they did! Wooo! No one has ever achieved this before! And although they only created and contained plasma for fractions of a second, it's absolutely incredible to the future of fusion.
So, it may be another 10-15 years or more before you see major fusion reactors being built but when they are, the energy they provide will be incomparable to any other type of energy! And the best part, absolutely no down side. No nuclear radiation or fallout, no nuclear waste water, just clean, renewable, near-unlimited energy. That's the future I want to be in.
Thanks for reading, and I will try to post a little more frequently!
As mentioned, in the next few posts, I will be highlighting the more mainstream renewable energies, and some of the big names driving the cause.
Until next time,
J
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