Nuclear Fusion VIII: The return of fusion (Colby Newman)
Believe it or not there's surprisingly more fusion to talk about.
This week I want to add some additional information that I have found that's relevant to my previous blogs. And hopefully, answer some questions along the way.
I would first like to say that according to Monarch Partnership, there are currently a large number of 'test' reactors online across the globe.
I don't know if that was something everyone was curious about but, none the less, I wanted to clear it up.
What are these 'test' reactors? As Monarch Partnership puts it, "they don't actually provide power to the grid. They merely serve as proof of concept."
Meaning that these reactors are merely being tested to study the overall effects.
Where are these test reactors? The Monarch Partnership states, "Currently, the EU (European Union), US, Russia and Japan have fusion reactors. Similar programs are underway in China, Brazil, Canada, and Korea."
As you can see, several countries are testing the effects and or the process of nuclear fusion.
Image courtesy of https://scitechdaily.com/negative-triangularity-a-positive-for-tokamak-fusion-power-reactors/
You may be asking yourself, well what's taking so long? Well I have an answer. Or rather the folks at Monarch Partnership do.
Allow me to use a common analogy that Monarch used. "Breaking glass is easy, putting it back together is hard."
Well the same thing applies to fusion. It's easy to split atoms, fusing two of them together is a challenge.
There is another issue with fusion. Efficiency. Most reactors use more energy than they produce. Which means that it's not cost effective.
That's all I have to say for this week. As always I'm open to questions. And be sure to do some of your own research if you wish.
I never knew about fusion especially nuclear fusion, but after reading your blog it helped me gain a little knowledge than before.
ReplyDeleteI never see something like that before, I think you did a really good job searching for this information , I would like to know how much this reactor affect to the global warming in terms of contamination.
ReplyDeleteColby, I liked your post thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI have no experience with fusion so this is a very interesting post to have read. This makes me wonder if there was more funding for fusion, would they be able to find a way to make it both cost effective and possible to fuse atoms together?