The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor is another straight-outta-sci-fi alternate energy sources that have physicists and proponents of nuclear energy salivating, as it has for the last 50 or so years.
The concept is based on fusion, the same process that keeps our sun churning. Hydrogen atoms collide, creating helium and releasing huge amounts of energy. However, the reaction must occur in temperatures in the 100s of millions. At that temperature matter becomes plasma, a miasma of nuclei with a positive charge and negatively-charged electrons.
On the sun, the plasma is made cohesive by gravity.
And although ITER is essentially a miniature sun, it's diminutive size does not produce enough gravity to contain it.
The answer: a giant magnetic container called a tokamak. The one used by ITER will have a diameter of 56 feet and is encased in niobium coils capable of creating enormous magnetic fields and lowering electrical resistance (superconduction). This will heat the the cloud of hydrogen inside while containing it in a ring of plasma well away from the tokamak's inner walls.
The one drawback?
When ITER goes online in 2018, "scientists can then begin working out how to harvest fusion energy for practical use," according to Discover magazine (Seife, Charles. "Free Energy: $15." Discover Oct. 2008: 32.).
Huh? $15 billion and 20 years of work, and no one knows exactly how to make it practical?
But perhaps asking if a small sun is capable of producing energy is a silly question. What is the ultimate source of all life-giving energy in our spatial proximity?
That's right. The Sun.
The concept is based on fusion, the same process that keeps our sun churning. Hydrogen atoms collide, creating helium and releasing huge amounts of energy. However, the reaction must occur in temperatures in the 100s of millions. At that temperature matter becomes plasma, a miasma of nuclei with a positive charge and negatively-charged electrons.
On the sun, the plasma is made cohesive by gravity.
And although ITER is essentially a miniature sun, it's diminutive size does not produce enough gravity to contain it.
The answer: a giant magnetic container called a tokamak. The one used by ITER will have a diameter of 56 feet and is encased in niobium coils capable of creating enormous magnetic fields and lowering electrical resistance (superconduction). This will heat the the cloud of hydrogen inside while containing it in a ring of plasma well away from the tokamak's inner walls.
The one drawback?
When ITER goes online in 2018, "scientists can then begin working out how to harvest fusion energy for practical use," according to Discover magazine (Seife, Charles. "Free Energy: $15." Discover Oct. 2008: 32.).
Huh? $15 billion and 20 years of work, and no one knows exactly how to make it practical?
But perhaps asking if a small sun is capable of producing energy is a silly question. What is the ultimate source of all life-giving energy in our spatial proximity?
That's right. The Sun.
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