Thursday, July 21, 2011

tiny fusions to light our way...!!!!

Nuclear fusion reactor:-
We have studied about nuclear fission and fusion reactions right from our school days...Most of us must be remembering the typical nuclear reactor we drew with a reactor, control rods, heat exchanger etc...We have seen or even have used the power from the fission reactor....
                  But just think of one day when we will be able to have a clean and safe power...a power we have been using since time immemorial. Yes you got me right, power as is produced in sun... fusion!!!
     Enough building up...while surfing the net, I got these basic info for you.
ITER: International thermonuclear experimentat reactor. It's planned to be set in Cadarache France. It aims at carrying out nuclear fusion reaction of hydrogen in a toroidal reactor by a method called magnetic confinement.
In a fusion reaction, hydrogen fuses woth another hydrogen to form helium, making tritium, deuterium, and beryllium as intermediate. fusion reaction needs very high temperature and pressure for initiation. These can be provided by magnetic confinement. In the toroid core(tokomak) , hydrogen gas is converted into plasma(at high temp, electrons are squeezed out and are free to roam, hope we could roam so without pressure of attendance in our lectures. ;) ) by microwaves, electricity, and neutral particles(for geeks ion cyclotron resonance is used) . To provide pressure, super conducting magets are to be used. They will squeeze the plasma . Another way to get the temp and press is inertial confinement, which uses laser and x-rays to make fusion feasible.
            till 2019, its just  a dream, just like worm holes in our ben 10 cartoon. But of course a full fledged and successful research is going on. I really wish we should be successful in getting it fused. :)
          For now, dont break your heart, we have the largest magnetic confinement plasma exp in JET (Joint European Torus). We also have DEMO which is doing research to have secure future commercialization of this process. I personally feel that after LHC, I am looking forward to this boom.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/fusion-reactor.htm(this one is really nice.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_cyclotron_resonance
Joint_European_Torus
Ion_cyclotron_resonance
www.iter.org
http://www.iter-india.org/
inertial_confinement/inertial_confinement

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