While it has seemed an impossible goal for nearly 100 years, scientists now believe that they are on brink of cracking one of the biggest problems in physics by harnessing the power of nuclear fusion, the reaction that burns at the heart of the sun.
In the spring, a team will begin attempts to ignite a tiny man-made star inside a laboratory and trigger a thermonuclear reaction.
Its goal is to generate temperatures of more than 100 million degrees Celsius and pressures billions of times higher than those found anywhere else on earth, from a speck of fuel little bigger than a pinhead. If successful, the experiment will mark the first step towards building a practical nuclear fusion power station and a source of almost limitless energy.
At a time when fossil fuel supplies are dwindling and fears about global warming are forcing governments to seek clean energy sources, fusion could provide the answer. Hydrogen, the fuel needed for fusion reactions, is among the most abundant in the universe. Building work on the £1.2 billion nuclear fusion experiment is due to be completed in spring.
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2 comments:
I would be quite skeptical if they can achieve net energy gain. They will probably demonstrate nuclear fusion, but it will require more energy to initiate the process. It requires a lot of heat and pressure to reach nuclear fussion, and the energy output will be marginal at this current state.
I'll take this fellow arts degree grad's word for it:
And how far away are they from turning cutting-edge science into real power stations that can deliver cheap energy to the grid?...Well the old joke amongst nuclear fusion scientists is that whenever that question has been asked the answer has been the same - "about 30 years away".
It's interesting to follow progress in that realm, however.
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