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Fusion powers stars and produces virtually all elements in a process called nucleosynthesis. The Sun is a main-sequence star, and, as such, generates its energy by nuclear fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium. In its core, the Sun fuses 620 million metric tons of hydrogen and makes 616 million metric tons of helium each second.
Sep 5, 2017 · And helium-3/helium-4 fusion into two helium-4s accounts for 3% of the reactions by number, releasing 19.99 MeV of energy for each reaction: 10.8% of the Sun's total energy.
- Ethan Siegel
Sep 29, 2014 · Fusion requires extreme amounts of energy to turn hydrogen into helium in the cores of stars. Quantum mechanics helps explain where all that energy comes from.
Dec 14, 2022 · Nuclear fusion is the process which gives the Sun its energy. Scientists from more than 50 countries have been trying to recreate it on Earth since the 1960s. They hope it could eventually provide ...
- Solar Fusion
- Terrestrial Fusion
- Approaches: Tokamak and Laser-Based Fusion
- Challenges
- Future Development
- Development in The UK
- Footnotes
Solar fusion proceeds through a three-stage process. First, two protons (hydrogen atoms stripped of their electrons) react to produce a deuteron, a positron and a neutrino. Then the deuteron, 2H, captures a proton to form the helium isotope 3He (helium-3), and then two 3He nuclei fuse to form 4He with the emission of two protons. In this way, the r...
The first terrestrial nuclear fusion experiment is attributed to Mark Oliphant who discovered 3He and 3H (tritium) via fusion of deuterons (see footnote 1). The fusion of two deuterons releases 5.5 megaelectron volts (MeV) of energy (compared to the 26.7 MeV produced in the stellar fusion), whereas the fusion of deuterons with tritium (2H+3H, D+T) ...
There are typically two approaches to fusion which have been historically pursued: i) Tokamak and ii) laser driven. The Tokamak reactor is a Russian invention which holds a doughnut ring of D+T plasma using magnetic fields and pumps energy into the plasma, using beams, heating it to the point where it is hot enough that the tunnelling probability i...
There are plenty of challenges in these approaches. In the Tokamak method, containing a stable plasma has been the focus for many years, and in both getting more energy out from the nuclear reactions than is put in, either to heating the plasma or from the lasers creating the photons irradiating the pellet. There have been a host of records claimed...
To date, a great deal of the focus has been on the fusion process itself. However, as fusion devices develop there is a need to begin to think about how a fusion reactor is manufactured and the energy might be extracted. The object which emerges from fusion which carries most of the energy is the neutron. The neutron being neutral is not confined b...
The UK is just embarking on the development of the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) development. This will create a fusion power plant around a compact UK designed Spherical Tokamak reactor design. The target is an operational plant by 2040. This is an exciting development which will galvanise and focus the research community around t...
Transmutation Effects Observed with Heavy Hydrogen, Oliphant, M. L. E., Harteck, P. and Rutherford, E. Proc. R. Soc. A 144, 692 (1934)Two helium-3 nuclei collide, creating a helium-4 nucleus plus two extra protons that escape as two hydrogen. Technically, a beryllium-6 nuclei forms first but is unstable and thus disintegrates into the helium-4 nucleus. The final helium-4 atom has less mass than the original 4 protons that came together (see E=mc2).
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Nov 8, 2024 · nuclear fusion, process by which nuclear reactions between light elements form heavier elements (up to iron). In cases where the interacting nuclei belong to elements with low atomic numbers (e.g., hydrogen [atomic number 1] or its isotopes deuterium and tritium), substantial amounts of energy are released. The vast energy potential of nuclear ...
