Nuclear Fusion is a nuclear reaction in which atomic nuclei of low atomic number fuse to form a heavier nucleus with the release of energy. The difference in mass between the products and reactants is manifested as the release of large amounts of energy.
Related Definitions in the Project: The Renewable Energy; Nuclear Fusion Energy; Energy Definitions
Example Article for the Nuclear Fusion:
Another Major Milestone in the Race for Nuclear Fusion (Source: Oil Price on 11 December 2023): By Felicity Bradstock - In the latest step to advance nuclear fusion technology, the world’s biggest reactor has just opened for business in Japan. This follows a huge influx in investment from the private sector, as companies and academic institutions around the globe race to achieve commercial-scale nuclear fusion. Things are looking more optimistic following a breakthrough last year and another in the summer, after decades of failed attempts. The technology is also gaining government backing, with the U.S. announcing a global nuclear fusion strategy at the COP28 climate summit in the UAE this month. Nuclear fusion is the reaction that takes place in the sun and other stars. It requires the merging of two light nuclei to form a single heavier nucleus. This process releases energy as the total mass of the resulting single nucleus is less than the mass of the two original nuclei, with the leftover mass being released as energy. Fusion reactions take place in a plasma state — a hot, charged gas made of positive ions and free-moving electrons. Scientists first explored the potential for nuclear fusion in the 1930s, but it is not until recently that researchers have achieved breakthroughs in the field, bringing us closer to developing effective fusion technology. ...
Private Sector Takes Lead in Nuclear Fusion Race (Source: Oil Price on 16 November 2023): By Haley Zaremba - Nuclear fusion is closer than ever to becoming a commercial reality as the private sector takes over research and development. For decades, nuclear fusion research lay outside the scope of private enterprise, as the leading technology used to conduct such experiments were so prohibitively expensive that only public funding could reasonably be expected to foot the bill. But now, thanks to a breakthrough from one of those state-funded projects, nuclear fusion has become far more accessible, and venture capitalists have wasted no time jumping into the nascent market. Nuclear fusion – the natural process that powers our sun – is often touted as the holy grail of clean energy research because of its ability to produce near-infinite amounts of completely carbon-free energy. But reproducing such a process here on Earth has proven difficult and costly. Some experiments have had some success in achieving a nuclear fusion reaction, but creating a sustained reaction that emits more energy than went into it is another story. ...
Nuclear Fusion Project Sees Cost Overruns, More Delays (Source: Oil Price on 22 June 2023): By Julianne Geiger - The old joke that nuclear fusion is perpetually a decade away may seem unfair, but the world’s largest fusion project is once again facing more delays and billions in cost overruns. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, has suffered at the hands of disrupted supply chains and faulty parts. And now, the project’s hopes of achieving fusion by next year is in serious jeopardy. The project has seen a number of setbacks—including Covid-19. When all its ducks were finally in a row again post-Covid, the project was once again struck by disruptions—this time from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting sanctions. Then on May 14 of last year, ITER’s director general, Bernard Bigot—a man brought in to set things right after previous delays and cost overruns--died. ...
Nuclear Fusion: A Clean Energy Revolution Or A Radioactive Nightmare? (Source: Oil Price on 20 June 2023): By Kurt Cobb - Fusion reactors, while producing energy, also produce neutron streams that can cause radiation damage, produce radioactive waste, necessitate biological shielding, and even create the potential for weapons-grade plutonium production. Apart from the aforementioned problems, fusion reactors face issues such as tritium release, intensive coolant demands, and high operating costs, which would require the power plant to have at least a one-gigawatt capacity to balance costs. Given the time and resources required for fusion power plant construction, the technology might not be feasible for timely carbon emission reduction, and the prospect of fusion energy might be distracting society from immediate solutions to energy scarcity and climate change. ...
Nuclear Fusion Remains Decades Away Despite Major Breakthroughs (Source: Oil Price on 8 June 2023): By Haley Zaremba - After decades of progress so incremental and expensive that it may have seemed pointless, nuclear fusion technology finally had a breakthrough worth writing home about. Last year, a team of scientists in California was able to achieve ignition, creating more energy from a laser-driven fusion experiment than was beamed into it. The breakthrough has signaled a new era for nuclear fusion, in which the nascent technology shifted from a pipe dream ripped out of the pages of science fiction to a model of clean energy production with actual potential for practical application and scalability. But critics still question whether creating an artificial sun here on Earth will ever be affordable and energy efficient enough to make a real impact on the global energy industry. In the last three years, nuclear fusion breakthroughs have increased exponentially, with scientists making incredible gains across the globe in different fusion experiments, often with completely different approaches. And it all happened nearly simultaneously when looking at the long timeline of nuclear fusion experimentation. All of these breakthroughs have been critical, but three, in particular, have rewritten the narrative and made even the staunchest doubters of nuclear fusion take pause. First, in 2021, a team of researchers at the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) in Hefei, China obliterated previous records for a sustained steady-state fusion reaction, achieving fusion for an unprecedented 1,056 seconds – nearly 20 minutes. In the same year, The Joint European Torus (JET) in Oxfordshire more than doubled its 1997 fusion record when it produced 59 megajoules of energy in a single fusion experiment. ...
Nuclear Fusion Has Gone From Pipe Dream To Possibility (Source: Oil Price on 14 January 2023): By Haley Zaremba - “When Will Nuclear Fusion Put Oil And Gas Out Of Business”? a Forbes headline asked late last year. While there have been major breakthroughs in achieving ignition in the last year which have tipped the nuclear fusion scales from pipe dream to possibility, the article concluded that we likely won’t see a switch to commercialized nuclear fusion in our lifetimes. But it’s closer to reality than ever before, and naysayers have increasingly had to walk back their nuclear fusion doubts in recent months and years. Breakthroughs keep piling up, technological advances are occurring more frequently in nuclear fusion experiments around the world, and the timeline for commercial fusion keeps getting revised to be shorter and shorter. ...
Scientists Make Breakthrough In $40 Trillion Nuclear Fusion Push (Source: Oil Price on 12 December 2022): By ZeroHedge - As the world moves towards net-zero emissions, sustainable and affordable power sources are urgently needed by humanity. As Visual Capitalist's Bruno Venditti details below, one of the most promising technologies, fusion, has attracted the attention of governments and private companies like Chevron and Google. In fact, Bloomberg Intelligence has estimated that the fusion market may eventually be valued at $40 trillion. Producing energy through nuclear fusion has been a long-held ambition for scientists and energy experts, and has prominently featured in science fiction novels and movies. The process involves fusing nuclei together, which throws off energy – which could then provide theoretically abundant energy on earth. Scientists have for decades tried to use nuclear fusion to produce electricity at a usable scale, however, replicating the reaction on Earth is highly challenging, requiring vast amounts of heat and pressure. ...
Nuclear Fusion’s Inclusion In The Inflation Act Is A Huge Win For Emerging Tech (Source: Oil Price on 1 September 2022): By Haley Zaremba - In August, President Joe Biden enacted the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes a wide array of provisions impacting varied topics such as Medicare, prescription drug prices, the Affordable Care Act, IRS funding, corporate tax law, electric vehicles, and renewable energies. So what doesn’t the Inflation Reduction Act do? Well, for one thing, it doesn’t lower inflation. According to a study by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, “The impact on inflation is statistically indistinguishable from zero.” In fact, the Inflation Reduction Act was not initially drafted as a response to rising inflation but is actually a slimmed-down version of the Build Back Better bill. This means that while the bill has no teeth in the inflation reduction department, it packs a serious wallop in terms of boosting the domestic renewable energy sector. Already, the photovoltaics company First Solar has announced that it will build its next solar panel manufacturing facility in the United States instead of overseas, citing the Inflation Reduction Act as the key motivation for doing so. The Arizona-based company will invest as much as $1 billion in the new facility and has said that it will also expand existing facilities in Ohio. ...
The Race For Nuclear Fusion Is Going Private (Source: Oil Price on 11 November 2021): By Haley Zaremba - For the past 100 years, commercial nuclear fusion has existed in a realm far closer to science fiction than to scientific practice. In fact, when English mathematician and astronomer Arthur Eddington hypothesized that our sun and stars generate their own power through a process of merging atoms to create massive amounts of energy, heat, and light just a century ago, he was very nearly dismissed as a quack. But since that time, nuclear fusion has advanced by leaps and bounds, from thought experiments to lab-tested experiments, and in the last few years, to major breakthroughs that hint that commercial fusion could really finally be just around the corner. ...
The World Is One Step Closer To Commercial Nuclear Fusion (By Haley Zaremba - Source: Oil Price on April 2021): The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is the largest nuclear fusion experiment in the world. The megaproject is a collaborative effort funded and run by seven members: the European Union, China, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States, with the United Kingdom and Switzerland participating through The European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), a massive lineup of members which altogether represents 35 countries, half the citizens in the world, and a whopping 85% of global GDP. The project, which involves a massive-scale tokamak that began construction last year, spans 42 hectares in Saint Paul-lez-Durance, southern France--approximately the size of 60 soccer fields. This gargantuan megaproject has been considered as one of humanity’s best shots at achieving commercializable nuclear fusion. While nuclear fusion has been achieved before, it has always consumed considerably more energy than it produces. Fusing atoms, the process that fuels our sun, is many times more powerful than splitting atoms--the process currently used in nuclear power production. What’s more, nuclear fusion can be achieved without emitting any greenhouse gases or using any radioactive nuclear fuel, a process which creates hazardous waste that can threaten human health for millennia--not to mention put a huge financial strain on the taxpayers who are funding its maintenance. ...
MIT Scientists: Nuclear Fusion Energy Could Be Closer Than Thought (By Tsvetana Paraskova - Source: Oil Price on October 2020): The decades-old dream of many scientists and science fiction writers may come true at some point over the next decade. Researchers at MIT and a startup spun out of MIT are working on a nuclear fusion experiment, which they are fairly certain will achieve its goal of creating a hot burning plasma to produce for the first time ever fusion energy more than the energy consumed to generate that fusion energy. Nuclear fusion has long been considered the answer to zero-emission by-product-free energy generation. However, no one has cracked the nuclear fusion code yet because of the challenges associated with the environment in which the process could take place. Fusion is the natural process that heats the Sun and all other stars, in which a huge amount of energy is produced by the fusion of light atoms, such as those in hydrogen, into heavier elements like helium. ...
Nuclear Fusion Could Be A Reality By 2025 (by Haley Zaremba - Source: Oil Price on 28 July 2019): In order to keep globally rising temperatures from increasing more than 1.5 degrees Celsius this century, the international community will have to cut carbon emissions by 45 percent by 2030 and down to zero by the middle of the century. Meanwhile emissions continue to increase every year, and the increase is accelerating, rising by 1.6 percent in 2017 and about 2.7 percent in 2018 to reach an all-time high. Making matters even more dire, global energy demand is projected to grow by approximately 27 percent by 2040, or 3,743 million tons oil equivalent (mtoe). What if there was one energy solution that could solve all of these pressing problems? ...
