Germany's New Nuclear Fusion Reactor Shocks the Entire SPACE Industry

#nuclearreactor #space #germany

Nuclear fusion is the process by which two light atomic nuclei combine to form a single heavier one while releasing massive amounts of energy. Our sun and other stars generate energy through nuclear fusion. While it might be naturally occurring we haven't been able to recreate the process here on earth. Recently however, Germany's plasma research facility has set a new record with its new nuclear fusion reactor , demonstrating that we are moving closer to the wonderful objective of fusion power. Lets take a look at how we can exploit nuclear fusion power as a clean, renewable source of energy.

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Nuclear fusion is the holy grail of an energy source. Fusion energy has the potential to be a clean , green and renewable source of energy if successfully implemented.
Fusion, connects atoms rather than separating them as nuclear fission reactors do. Thus, no hazardous radioactive waste is produced.

Scientists at Germany's Max Planet Institute for Plasma Physics turned on an experimental reactor and produced hydrogen plasma in a device. This device is called the Vendel Stein 7x stellarator. The stellarator is made to hold plasma formed by smashing hydrogen atoms together and blasting them with microwaves until the matter reaches temperatures of 100 million degrees at which point the nuclei of the atoms fuse to form helium. The entire process generates energy and reflects what occurs at the sun's core. The stellarator's donut shaped core in essence forms a miniature star. The device debuted in late 2015 at the Max Planck institute demonstrating that it could keep a loop of helium ions heated to a million degrees in situ for a tenth of a second. The helium ions racing through the plasma reached a searing at 40 million degrees kelvin, four times hotter than in the following experiments when 18 times more energy was supplied into the w7x. As a point of reference, the sun's surface only reaches a temperature of 5505 degrees celsius.

Fusion energy is the most promising energy source of the future because it doesn't produce the same radiation troubles as atom splitting power. Fusion is therefore the cleanest kind of electricity generation.

There are 2 types of machines that are promising and can make fusion energy the future. The w7x is one of them. The electromagnetic fields generated by the resultant plasma used by machines like MITs Alcator c-mod tokamak , to help keep the writhing jelly donut of charged particles in line. With the hot slam dancing cloud of particles in place,
fuel injection produces incredible amounts of energy. However it's plagued by instabilities that make power generation a fleeting affair. Meanwhile stellarators like the w7x use banks of magnetic coils to contain the plasma giving them more control and allowing the hot ring of helium jelly to swirl for longer periods even though they don't quite match the output of the tokamak w7x's 15 meter wide machine appears to have shown as a method to bridge that gap.

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