Go to original

Everything you need to know for a dinner party conversation about ... Nuclear fusion
[Sources:] Britannica.com, wikipedia.org, nei.org, ccnr.org, Hydro-Québec, energyquest.ca.gov, iter.org
The Gazette (Montreal)

Monday, October 20, 2008

So what's happening? The IAEA Fusion Energy Conference marks the 50th year of open, collaborative nuclear fusion research. The International Atomic Energy Agency event is taking place in Geneva, which is where the Second United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy took place 50 years ago. Research had been conducted in extreme secrecy then and although the Cold War was still on in 1958, the conference marked the first time countries came together to share research on nuclear fusion.

Okay, but what is nuclear fusion? It's the energy created when atomic nuclei are joined to create a heavier nucleus. Fusion is hard to control, though harnessed it could be key to a nearly endless supply of energy. Fusion is what happens inside stars - it's called stellar nucleosynthesis and it's what makes the sun hot and bright.

But it can be controlled, right? Isn't that how the A-bomb works? The atomic bomb was made using nuclear fission, which happens when energy is created by splitting the atoms, rather than crashing them together. Fission is what powers nuclear reactors: Fuelled by uranium, chain reactions are controlled so that energy is created and released at a steady rate rather than exploding all at once. The heat produced is used to boil water in the core of the reactor; the steam gets a turbine going and the turbine generates electricity. Water is also used to keep everything cool.

How can I keep fusion and fission straight? Fission is little and fusion is huge. Say it out loud: it sorta rhymes.

Who discovered all this? Rhyming aside, New Zealand researcher Ernest Rutherford is commonly referred to as the father of nuclear physics. He oversaw the gold-foil experiment, in which scientists discovered, by firing helium nuclei through an incredibly thin layer of gold, that the atom's mass was concentrated in a minute region, surrounded by electrons - the orbital theory. The physics chair of McGill University, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1908. His work was picked up by Marcus Oliphant, who, under the direction of J. Robert Oppenheimer, was instrumental in the development of the atomic bomb.

Wait. Wasn't Einstein involved? Sure. In fact, Albert Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 explains nuclear fusion. As the nuclei are fused, the mass they lose is converted into energy and carried away.

Didn't you say this was all done in secrecy? It was very cloak-and-dagger. The Manhattan Project was started in the U.S. in 1942 because of rumours that Germany and Japan had their own atomic programs. The first live test of their atomic bomb - nuclear fission in action - was on July 16, 1945. A target committee had chosen Hiroshima, Japan, to test the A-bomb. The program was shut down that August.

So nuclear energy is a pretty scary thing. Not always, and the idea is that nuclear fusion offers plentiful and cheap electricity as fossil fuels quickly dwindle. And it's safe! Under the "worst imaginable sequence of events," exposure to radiation would be below one per cent, which is equivalent to the normal background radiation our bodies handle on a daily basis.

Neil Calder, communications director of the ITER, a research proposal for the fusion reactor, has said: "Fusion is a way of producing energy that we know works. The energy released is clean, with very little waste, no CO2 and the fuels are limitless. A bath of water and a laptop battery would provide the energy needs of a European family for a lifetime."

So far, no one has been able to build a nuclear fusion reactor. The EU, Japan, China, India, South Korea, Russia and the U.S. have joined forces to build what they hope will be a viable nuclear fusion reactor in Cadarache, France. In 2003, Canada pulled out of the project, which will cost $5 billion to build, about $5 billion to operate and $500 million to decommission. The program is expected to run for 35 years.

Existing nuclear power plants work on nuclear fission and offer a green, clean burn that has uses in fields as diverse as medicine and space travel. It emits no carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide or nitrogen oxides, though containment of radioactive waste makes it less attractive than a fusion reactor. Nuclear energy in Quebec has a bad rep, thanks to the nuclear-fission fiasco called Gentilly-1. Gentilly-1 was built in Bécancour, about 100 kilometres northeast of Montreal. It produced only about 180 days of power over the seven years it was in operation. Gentilly-1 has left a legacy of radioactive waste, according to the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. Gentilly-2 has been up and running since 1983; other Quebec generating stations are Tracy, Cadillac and La Citière.

Nuclear Fusion would be a great name for a band. Yes, it would.

Open-ended question: Should Canada have pulled out of the fusion project?

(In accordance with Title 17, Section 107, of the U.S. Code, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. New Energy Times has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of the original text in this article; nor is New Energy Times endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

"Go to Original" links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted on New Energy Times may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the "Go to Original" links.