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Nuclear Fusion Energy
XXI Century: Stellar Energy
The 20th century was the era of those firsts awakening´s of the global consciousness paided for at a high price, where great discoveries in sciences has been realized and advanced technology was created.
And the man for first time touched the stars and at the same time, on his own planet, mankind faced greatest challenges to mastering with wisdom the resources and its life on its unique home in the universe: the Earth...
In the XXI century: Nuclear fusion is precisely an attractive, clean and a powerful energy source capable to bring to mankind an incredible opportunity to reverse the serious damage on the Earth.
1.- Nuclear fusion uses hydrogen isotopes (deuterium and tritium, D - T)
2.- 1 gr of the reaction D - T is equivalent to 10 coal tons or 26 kW/hr
3.- There is no nuclear chain reactions
4.- 4 times more powerful that fission
5.- Is the natural and operational way to release energy into the stars!!!
Click on the image to know: What is Fusion?
The energy released into the Stars, is generated due the fusion of D - T, a tremendous action due gravity force confining these nuclei making a nuclear fusion reaction and much more, thanks to the gravity, we travel with our Sun into the space with 70,000 km/hr!!! Gravity, then is the first way to make fusion, but...
On Earth there exist two ways to develop, reproduce, understand and make nuclear controlled fusion through excellent research programs & laboratories:
Magnetic Confinement Fusion
6.- Plasma is conformed by charged particles [positive nuclei and negative electrons] that can be shaped and confined by magnetic forces
7.- The magnetic field acts as a recipient that is not affected by heat like an ordinary solid container
8.- Charged particles in the plasma will follow magnetic field lines.
Scientists have been exploring the properties of plasmas within magnetic confinement devices since the 1950s. Several configurations has been developed applying stronger magnetic fields, on this page we will appreciate some of them, as:
Tokamaks, Spherical Toruses, Stellarators, Reversed Field Pinch, Spheromaks, etc.
JET Tokamak
The Joint European Torus (JET): Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in the UK, is the world's largest and most powerful tokamak in operation today and the focal point of European fusion research.
Designed to study fusion in conditions approaching those needed for a power plant, it is the only device that can handle the deuterium-tritium fuel mix that will be used in ITER. In operation since 1983, milestones at JET have included the world's first controlled release of deuterium-tritium fusion power (1991) and the world record for fusion power (16 megawatts in 1997). Click on the photo or the underline to read more about JET Tokamak
Asdex Tokamak
At the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics in Germany, an important discovery for tokamak operation was made in 1982: H-mode. This optimum, high-confinement operating mode has become the basis for advanced tokamak operation, including ITER. Click on the photo or the underline to read more about the Max Planck Institute or ASDEX Upgrade
Start / MAST / NSTX Upgrade - Spherical Toruses
MAST: A Spherical Tokamak to test plasma regimes
NSTX_upgrade: in operation since 1999 at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, USA is a magnetic fusion device that, like MAST, is based on the spherical tokamak concept. Click on the underline to read more about MAST or NSTX
T - 15 Tokamak
The superconducting T-15 tokamak was operated from 1988 to 1995 at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, Russia. Today, the tokamak is being upgraded with the auxiliary plasma heating and current drive systems, which will allow the simultaneous achievement of high plasma temperature and plasma density
Stellarator TJ - II
The TJ - II project is the flagship project of the National Fusion Laboratory of Spain. TJ - II is a flexible, medium-size stellarator of the heliac type, the second largest operational stellarator in Europe (after W7-X). Click on the photo or the underline to read more about the Stellarator TJ - II
Stellarator Wendelstein 7X
Wendelstein 7-X at the Greifswald branch of IPP is a large stellarator with modular superconducting coils which enable steady state plasma operation in order to explore the reactor relevance of this concept. Click on the photo or the underline to read more about the Stellarator W7-X
Inertial Confinement Fusion
Fusion through focalized beams to compress matter, making ignition on a D-T target, similar as a supernova
National Ignition Facility NIF
The National Ignition Facility is the world’s largest and most energetic laser facility ever built. NIF is also the most precise and reproducible laser as well as the largest optical instrument. Click on the photo or the underline to read more about the NIF
High Power Laser Energy Research Hiper
The High Power laser for Energy Research project (HiPER) was conceived as a large scale laser system designed to demonstrate significant energy production from inertial confinement fusion. Click on the photo or the underline to read more about the HiPER project
Omega Rochester
OMEGA's 60 laser beams focus up to 40,000 joules of energy onto a target that measures less than 1 millimeter in diameter in approximately one billionth of a second. Click on the photo or the underline to read more about Omega
The previous Fusion methods reported on this page, are actually under research and development in many National Fusion Programs. The doughnut - shaped torus of the tokamak device represented a major break-through in plasma science at the time, offering the conditions for temperature levels and plasma confinement times that had never before been reached. This is the reason for the existence of ITER.
At this time the most important international project via magnetic confinement fusion is ITER: The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, please, if you want to know much more about Nuclear Fusion: click on the previous yellow banner or visit: http://www.iter.org/
ITER: International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor is the 2nd Scientific & Technological Project after the International Space Station
Click on the image to read more about: what is a Tokamak?
Click on the image to read more about: International efforts on MCF
Research Programs in China, Europe, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States of America are re-orienting their objectives as test beds for ITER and for the next machine, DEMO. Click on the image to read more about: Advantanges on MCF
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