Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Milestone in nuclear research: researchers succeed in small sensation in the ... - ABC Online

The science has come her dream of the creation of energy through nuclear fusion a step closer: Scientists in the U.S. managed by its own account for the first time, to bring about a nuclear fusion in two cases, where less energy was inserted into the fuel as the came out the end of it. From her on Wednesday in the journal “Nature” published study, however, it is clear also that the recovered energy is still very low and previously, there are high energy losses.

Nuclear fusion is the reverse process, nuclear fission, as it is used in nuclear power plants to generate energy. According to many experts, the controlled nuclear fusion would be the ideal type of energy, because there is enough raw material for it to fall over the long term radioactive waste, and the power plants would be relatively safe. According to Max Planck Institute a gram of fuel in such a plant could produce 90,000 kilowatt hours of energy.

Despite years of research, but not the scientists were able to date to bring about a nuclear fusion, in which more energy came out than was put into it. The problem: In order to create a nuclear fusion, are extremely high temperatures of at least 100 million degrees Celsius is required and an extremely high pressure from the outside. Such conditions exist, for example, in the interior of stars, when two hydrogen atoms fuse there to form a helium atom.

On Earth, the scientists have decided to merge two isotopes of hydrogen: deuterium and tritium, the reaction also produces helium. So far, the energy expenditure but there was always much higher than the energy gain.

No comments:

Post a Comment