Mini Nuclear Fusion Reactors
July 7, 2009 in Energy, Transport
This is another approach to nuclear fusion.
It occurred to me while considering the current status of nuclear fusion (by opposition with nuclear fission):
- We can do it, we know how to.
- It’s cleaner than fission, and tremendously more powerful.
- Actually, it’s so powerful that we only use it in bombs. We cannot handle it in a plant yet.
Ok. Now imagine you have this almost unlimited resource of energy, that is so powerful that it just cannot be contained in anything. There are thousands of researchers working on it, trying to make it levitate in magnetics fields to contain the reaction in an enormous electric plant. The heat generated by the reaction will serve to evaporate water, which will go through turbines, making them rotate in order to generate electricity. Then, this electricity will eventually serve to power electric cars.
Why do we have do make things this complicated? If fusion is about exploding things, why don’t we do it directly in the devices we use, at a smaller scale that will make it easier to handle. I see for example planes that have small nuclear reactors allowing them to fly twice faster on longer distances without burning kerosene, or bullets that are fired thanks to hydrogen instead of powder. I mean, we don’t burn oil in order to produce electricity and put it back in our cars, we explode oil directly in our engines. Why can’t it be so with hydrogen?
Henry said on February 3, 2010
Because it doesn’t produce enough energy for a small quantity yet. Did you know that the industrial application of nuclear fusion for energy production is planned for the end of the century? Banks don’t even invest in it yet, only governments do. Of course, if it was possible, we would do it: nuclear fusion, as you already know, doesn’t produce nuclear waste. How do these aiprlanes reactors exactly work? Because if we can control nuclear fusion in an airplane reactor, why can’t we in a plant? Can you remember of the article describing the airplane’s technology?
Henry said on February 12, 2010
Joan, could you please answer my questions? I can’t rate this idea as long as I don’t understand exacty what your point is.
Joan said on February 13, 2010
I didn’t say that those planes exist already… We only use fusion in bombs so far. Actually we need so much power to ignite the reaction that hydrogen bombs have a small uranium bomb inside them as a detonator. Read that article, it’s incredibly interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons
Now I have read in the new york times that the most advanced method for controlled fusion nowadays consist of using laser beam to heat small plastic balls filled with hydrogen. There is the article, amazing too: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/opinion/15friedman.html
The main point of my idea is that we should take it to a smaller scale. A scale that requires less security, less control, less igniting energy. A scale where the explosion could be contained in a traditional metallic reactor.
What is for sure is that I’m not the only one who tried it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_aircraft