Funding for Nuclear Fusion … step in the right direction
Nuclear power gets a seriously bad rap. With core meltdowns, radiation, and waste toxic for millennia you can understand why. The other side of the coin is that nuclear energy doesn’t product CO2 and is pretty darn efficient. Of course we’re talking about power generation based on nuclear fission. That is the same stuff as the first atomic bombs. Fission splits atoms (usually enriched U236) to release energy. Problem is the radiation and waste. Now nuclear fusion is a different beast. That’s the stuff of modern nuclear weapons (thermonuclear to be exact). It fuses hydrogen atoms to make helium and release a ton of energy. Problem with fusion is keeping it going, controlling the chain reaction as is done in fission reactors. Lots of research is being done on fusion, and not just to blow stuff up. UC Irvine has just received funding for research on a fusion reactor:
The company, which grew out of the University of California Irvine, says its advanced plasma fusion technologies could be used to generate electricity as well as eliminate waste from nuclear power plants. A plant based on its technology would cost less than a conventional nuclear plant. Tri Alpha was founded in 1998 and has raised funds in the past.
Tri Alpha is working on a generator in which hydrogen chases boron, according to literature from UC Irvine. These atoms then form a helium atom, which is placed in a particle accelerator. Slowing down the helium generates electricity.
Source: CNET
I read an article over the weekend, which I have to find online, that says despite the fact that we want to use solar energy and wind energy for power generation, we just can’t generate enough to meet our current demand. There is a call from some environmentalists to promote nuclear energy again. Good idea?
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Try looking at the HiPER Laser project. European based but with many other nations joining in. While electro-magnetic confinement fusion is being worked on and has new European funding ( now building the new ITER reactor at Cadarache France), the other technique in development to achieve fusion energy uses very large lasers. Inertial Confiement Fusion is the name of the process. The HiPER project (part of the European Science Road Map) went forward to Brussels on 02 May 2007 for development funding. Let’s hope the decision is in favour. All the word’s renewables cannot handle man’s ravenous appetite for energy, and we all know that burning fossil fuels is no longer a sane option. It’s a fact that fusion energy will take a long while to develop to the levels necessary to make a practical difference, and we need both types of fusion research to go forward at maximum speed and with seriously large funding. Meanwhile all possible must be done to develop renewables to help bridge the energy gap until fusion is made to work. It still won’t be enough. Nobody like a nuclear process (fission) which leaves waste with very long decay times, but logic dictates that we must go for 4th generation fission systems now if the lights are to be kept on in the near to mid term future.