Nuclear Fusion reactions power the Sun and other stars. In a fusion reaction, two light nuclei merge to form a single heavier nucleus.

The leftover mass becomes energy. Einstein’s equation (E=mc2), which says in part that mass and energy can be converted into each other, explains why this process occurs.

Fusion can involve many different elements in the periodic table. However, researchers working on fusion energy applications are especially interested in the deuterium-tritium (DT) fusion reaction.

In the process, it also releases much more energy than most fusion reactions. In a potential future fusion power plant such as a tokamak or stellarator, neutrons from DT reactions would generate power for our use.

The Department of Energy Office of Science, Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) program seeks to develop a practical fusion energy source. To do so, FES partners with other Office of Science programs.

FES also partners with the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration to pursue fundamental research on fusion reactions in support of DOE’s nuclear stockpile stewardship mission. Matthew Lanctot (U.S.

Scientific terms can be confusing. DOE Explains offers straightforward explanations of key words and concepts in fundamental science.

The energy from the Sun – both heat and light energy – originates from a nuclear fusion process that is occurring inside the core of the Sun. The specific type of fusion that occurs inside of the Sun is known as proton-proton fusion.

Inside the Sun, this process begins with protons (which is simply a lone hydrogen nucleus) and through a series of steps, these protons fuse together and are turned into helium. This fusion process occurs inside the core of the Sun, and the transformation results in a release of energy that keeps the sun hot.

It is important to note that the core is the only part of the Sun that produces any significant amount of heat through fusion (it contributes about 99%). The rest of the Sun is heated by energy transferred outward from the core.

The overall process of proton-proton fusion within the Sun can be broken down into several simple steps. A visual representation of this process is shown in Figure 1.

The final helium-4 atom has less mass than the original 4 protons that came together (see E=mc2). Because of this, their combination results in an excess of energy being released in the form of heat and light that exits the Sun, given by the mass-energy equivalence.

Since this proton-proton chain happens frequently – 9.2 x 1037 times per second – there is a significant release of energy. Of all of the mass that undergoes this fusion process, only about 0.7% of it is turned into energy.

Using the mass-energy equivalence, we find that this 4.26 million metric tonnes of matter is equal to about 3.8 x 1026 joules of energy released per second.

The fusion process is the reaction that powers the sun. On the sun, in a series of nuclear reactions, four isotopes of hydrogen-1 are fused into a helium-4 with the release of a tremendous amount of energy.

Deuterium is a minor isotope of hydrogen, but it’s still relatively abundant. Tritium doesn’t occur naturally, but it can easily be produced by bombarding deuterium with a neutron.

The scientists said they proved nuclear fusion can work on Earth, but we are still many years from being able to use it in power plants. Yet, scientists are optimistic that controlled fusion power will be achieved.

The isotopes of hydrogen needed for the hydrogen bomb fusion reaction were placed around an ordinary fission bomb. The explosion of the fission bomb released the energy needed to provide the activation energy (the energy necessary to initiate, or start, the reaction) for the fusion process.

But achieving this goal requires overcoming three problems:. Temperature.

Containment. K represents the Kelvin temperature scale.

Because the plasma has a charge, magnetic fields can be used to contain it — like a magnetic bottle. But if the bottle leaks, the reaction won’t take place.

Using lasers to zap the hydrogen isotope mixture and provide the necessary energy bypasses the containment problem. But scientists have not figured out how to protect the lasers themselves from the fusion reaction.

Nuclear fusion is a type of nuclear reaction where two light nuclei collide together to form a single, heavier nucleus. Fusion results in a release of energy because the mass of the new nucleus is less than the sum of the original masses.

For elements lighter than iron, fusion often releases energy. For elements heavier than iron, it takes energy to cause fusion to happen.

Although the fusion of small atoms gives off a lot of energy, initiating this process requires a significant amount of energy. This energy is needed to overcome the Coulomb repulsion that exists between the protons the two different nuclei.

The initial energy needed is a major factor which makes fusion difficult to achieve.

Some fusion reactions include:. Currently, there are no large-scale fusion reactor that could provide energy for commercial use.

The process of fusion is difficult to control largely because of the extreme conditions necessary for the reactions to take place.

Energy from microwaves or lasers must be used to heat hydrogen atoms to the necessary temperatures. At these temperatures, hydrogen is a plasma, and this plasma must be sufficiently contained for fusion to continue, and safety.

This process is done by using intense magnetic fields, lasers, or ion beams.

Currently, the largest fusion effort is the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor or ITER in France. This reactor began construction in 2013 and uses a confinement method known as a Tokamak.

The experimental phase of ITER is expected to begin in 2027. For more information on this project, click here.

Deuterium and tritium are promising fuels for producing energy in future power plants based on fusion energy. Fusion energy powers the Sun and other stars through nuclear fusion reactions.

While all isotopes of hydrogen have one proton, deuterium also has one neutron and tritium has two, so their ion masses are heavier than protium, the isotope of hydrogen with no neutrons. When deuterium and tritium fuse, they create a helium atom, which has two protons and two neutrons, and an energetic neutron.

On Earth, fusion has the potential to supply safe, clean, and relatively limitless energy. However, there are requirements to make these power plants a reality.

Fusion reactions can occur with elements weighing less than iron. But most elements will not fuse unless they are in the interior of a star.

One current possibility is deuterium-tritium fuel. This fuel reaches nuclear fusion reaction conditions at lower temperatures than other elements and releases more energy than other fusion reactions.

Deuterium is common: about 1 out of every 6,500 hydrogen atoms in seawater is in the form of deuterium. This means our oceans contain many tons of this hydrogen isotope.

Tritium is not common. It is a radioactive isotope that decays relatively quickly, with a 12-year half-life.

However, there is a process to produce tritium. For example, exposing the more common element lithium to energetic neutrons can generate tritium through a low-energy nuclear fission reaction.

Tritium breeding systems will require enriched lithium, specifically the isotope lithium-6 (with three protons and three neutrons). Since lithium-6 is far less abundant than other lithium isotopes, scientists are actively researching lithium isotope separation with an emphasis on scalable, environmentally friendly methods.

FES works with the Advanced Scientific Computing Research program using scientific computing to advance fusion science and understand the effect of ion mass on various plasma phenomena. At Office of Science user facilities such as the DIII-D tokamak and NSTX-U spherical tokamak, scientists study the impact of ion mass on plasma confinement, transport, and turbulence.

The Office of Science Nuclear Physics program develops the fundamental nuclear science underpinning the understanding of fusion by creating nuclear reaction databases, generating nuclear isotopes, and studying aspects of nucleosynthesis.

One of DOE’s missions is to steward the fundamental science underlying the curation of nuclear materials, establish the applied engineering capabilities that can supply the needed materials, and create the commercial opportunities for private companies to establish and expand the necessary supply chains.

Scientific terms can be confusing. DOE Explains offers straightforward explanations of key words and concepts in fundamental science.

Nuclear fusion is the process of forcing together two light atomic nuclei and creating a heavier one, in the process taking a tiny amount of matter and turning it into massive amounts of energy.

The vast majority of energy that Earth receives comes from the sun, and without it, life itself on our planet would be impossible.

This layer of the ball of superheated plasma we call the sun is heated by the star’s core, where the majority of nuclear fusion takes place. This source of energy is so ubiquitous and so vital here on Earth, that it’s little wonder that physicists are desperate to emulate it in reactors on our planet.

Related: What is the sun made of.

Robert has contributed to Space.com for over a decade, and his work has appeared in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space and more.

This tells us that matter and energy are interchangeable, while the term c² tells us that a little mass creates a lot of energy. When matter particles fuse, the particles going into the process have slightly more mass than the daughter particles that are created, with the difference in mass ‘liberated’ as energy.

Fortunately, stars offset that by having a lot of raw material to power fusion, and these processes run at incredible rates.

There are two other branches of the PP chain (II and III) but these only account for around 15 percent of the thermonuclear fusion in the sun. The PPI chain process involves four hydrogen atoms smashing together and creating a helium atom, two electrons, two neutrinos, and two highly energetic gamma-ray photons.

While some of the energy is carried away as the kinetic energy of the daughter particle, the majority is carried by the two gamma-ray photons. These photons will struggle to escape the star’s dense interior, however — taking over 30,000 years to move from the core to the surface.

Each occurrence of the PPI radiates about 0.0000000000044 Joules, which means — ignoring the other fusion process going on in the sun — our star has to complete this process about 9×10³⁷ (9 followed by 37 zeroes) times every second to maintain its luminosity.

That equates to about 260 billion Joules, enough energy to power a 60-watt light bulb for about 100 years. Because of its tremendous hydrogen content, the sun has maintained this fusion rate for around four and a half billion years and will continue to do so for a further four and a half billion years until the hydrogen in its center is exhausted.

Related: When will the sun die.

But, helium isn’t the only chemical element being forged in the sun. When and where do stars forge heavier elements.

Astronomers describe stars as containing hydrogen, helium and everything else (with elements heavier than helium described as ‘metals’ by astronomers) and these other elements also play a role in fusion. The PPI isn’t the main fusion reaction in more massive stars than the sun, however.

The CN cycle begins with the nucleus of a carbon-12 atom using it as a catalyst — an element that speeds up a reaction but is unchanged at the end of it — for fusion. Carbon-12 through proton capture goes through various stages until a helium atom is emitted and carbon-12 is recovered.

The energy generated by fusion serves a vital purpose within stars, providing the outward pressure that balances the ball of plasma against the inward force of gravity. That means that when fusion ceases, so goes the outward pressure.

For stars more massive than the sun — which will end its life as a smoldering white dwarf — this gravitational collapse creates enough pressure to trigger the nuclear fusion of helium created by the main sequence lifetime in its core, fusing it to create carbon, neon and oxygen. When helium is exhausted, collapse occurs again triggering the fusion of even heavier elements.

This progression of nuclear fusions ends even for the most massive stars when iron dominates the stellar core. This is because iron is an extremely stable element and stars aren’t massive enough to trigger its fusion.

This triggers a supernova that flings the elements the star has forged during its lifetime out into the universe. This material from these dead stars becomes the building blocks of the next generation of stars, the planets, and everything around us, including our own human bodies.

Humanity can’t bring the cores of stars down to Earth, so the next best thing is replicating the dense gas of plasma found at the heart of the sun.

Tokamaks are often also called ‘artificial suns’ due to the fact these doughnut-shaped machines replicate processes that occur in the sun.

A commercial tokamak will aim to use the thermal energy of a plasma heated by fusion to heat water, create steam and in turn spin a turbine that generates electricity. Though fusion can involve a wealth of chemical elements, the nuclear reaction that most tokamaks aim to make viable is the fusion of the heavy hydrogen isotopes deuterium (with a nucleus of one proton and one neutron) and tritium (one proton and two neutrons).

— Does the sun rotate.

— How was the sun formed.

The International Atomic Agency (IAEA) estimates that enough deuterium can be extracted from 0.26 gallons (one liter) of water to provide as much energy as the combustion of 79 gallons (300 liters) of oil. That means the oceans contain sufficient deuterium to sustain humanity’s fusion energy needs for millions of years.

In addition to this, the main byproducts of fusion power, neutrons and helium, are not radioactive and thus don’t present the same disposal problems as the byproduct of nuclear fission plants — with fission being almost the mirror image of fusion, breaking large atoms apart into smaller, often radioactive atoms.

The question is. if fusion power is so good, why don’t we already have it.

Fusion processes aren’t easy to replicate here on Earth partially because massive forces of gravity within stars are needed to overcome the repulsion between positively charged atomic nuclei of hydrogen.

The target temperature for plasmas at tokamaks is around 270 million degrees Fahrenheit (about 150 million degrees Celsius). That’s about 100 times the temperature at the core of the sun, about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million degrees Celsius).

28 May 2010. Posted by Ryan Anderson.

Everyone knows about the sun, it’s that really bright thing that rises every morning and sets every evening. Not everyone knows much about it though.

Ok, so maybe you knew that. But if you’re so smart, what’s it made of.

You might think that a bunch of gas floating around in space wouldn’t hold together very well, but the sun is HUGE. It weighs 300,000 times as much as the earth.

In fact, gravity squeezes the center of the sun together so hard that the hydrogen atoms stick together to form helium in a process called fusion. Here’s a diagram of what happens during fusion:

It looks sort of complicated, but the important thing to know is, four hydrogen atoms get turned into one helium atom, and in the process a LOT of energy is released. All the energy being released in the center of the sun has to go somewhere, and it goes into heating up the center of the sun.

At really high temperatures, matter is no longer a solid, liquid, or gas. It becomes a plasma, which means the electrons aren’t attached to the nucleus anymore, and both can just go flying around.

The first is radiation, which means it travels as photons (light) through the dense plasma. After traveling by radiation for a while, the energy starts to travel by convection.

Hot gas is less dense, so it starts to float upward. Once it floats to the top, the hot blob cools down and begins to sink again.

Convection is what causes weather on earth, hot air rises and cooler air rushes in beneath it, making wind. On the sun, we can see convection happening right at the surface.

Each granule is about 1/10 the size of the earth. Check them out in this picture:

The bright parts in the center of the granules is hot gas rising, the dark edges are the cool gas sinking back down. This layer of the sun (with all the granules) that you can see is called the photosphere.

Most people think of the photosphere as the “surface” of the sun. Above the photosphere is a thin layer called the chromosphere.

(Never look directly at the sun, even during an eclipse.

At this temperature, hydrogen glows red, giving the chromosphere its color.

Above the chromosphere is a wispy layer that extends off into space called the corona. The corona is really hot (more than a million degrees.

It is made of gas and bits of atoms that are getting blown off the sun. These particles are called the solar wind.

Telescopes have shown that Jupiter and Saturn also have aurora, so the solar wind keeps going a very long way. Spots and Loops and Flares, Oh My.

The sun isn’t just a boring ball of plasma, there’s some really amazing stuff going on up there. We said before that plasma is when the bits of atoms can move around however they want, but that’s not the whole story.

Those magnetic fields force the plasma to follow them, and end up making some really interesting features on the surface of the sun. Sunspots are the most well known result.

The gas that is in the sunspot gets stuck and cools off, so it looks darker. Check out this movie of sunspots forming.

But they are truly awesome, so I recommend clicking the links. ).

The loops can grow to be extremely large. When they are seen in front of the photosphere, they are called filaments, when they are seen at the edge of ths sun in front of space they are called prominences.

These loops contain a lot of energy stored in the magnetic fields. Sometimes the filaments “let go” and plasma goes flying either away from the sun, or is attracted to other magnetic fields on the sun.

A blob of gas goes flying off and hits some loops, making them shake back and forth. Sometimes, when the loops get crossed or twisted, a huge amount of energy is released in what is called a flare.

Sometimes this causes huge clouds of hot gas to go flying off the sun.

These clouds of gas are called Coronal Mass Ejections, and can be enormous. Check out the next picture, with a picture of the earth added for scale.

Posted in: Astronomy, Magnetic Fields, Not Mars, Video 1 Comment/Trackback ».

Fusion reactions are of two basic types: (1) those that preserve the number of protons and neutrons and (2) those that involve a conversion between protons and neutrons. Reactions of the first type are most important for practical fusion energy production, whereas those of the second type are crucial to the initiation of star burning.

An important fusion reaction for practical energy generation is that between deuterium and tritium (the D-T fusion reaction). It produces helium (He) and a neutron (n) and is written D + T → He + n.

The same is true on the right. The other reaction, that which initiates star burning, involves the fusion of two hydrogen nuclei to form deuterium (the H-H fusion reaction): H + H → D + β + + ν, where β + represents a positron and ν stands for a neutrino.

Afterward there are one proton and one neutron (bound together as the nucleus of deuterium) plus a positron and a neutrino (produced as a consequence of the conversion of one proton to a neutron). Both of these fusion reactions are exoergic and so yield energy.

However, practical energy generation requires the D-T reaction for two reasons: first, the rate of reactions between deuterium and tritium is much higher than that between protons. second, the net energy release from the D-T reaction is 40 times greater than that from the H-H reaction.

The energy radiated by the Sun is produced during the conversion of hydrogen (H) atoms to helium (He). The Sun is at least 90 percent hydrogen by number of atoms, so the fuel is readily available.

If all the hydrogen is converted, 0.7 percent of the mass becomes energy, according to the Einstein formula E = mc2, in which E represents the energy, m is the mass, and c is the speed of light. A calculation of the time required to convert all the hydrogen in the Sun provides an estimate of the length of time for which the Sun can continue to radiate energy.

Converting 0.7 percent of the 2 × 1032 grams of hydrogen into energy that is radiated at 4 × 1033 ergs per second permits the Sun to shine for 3 × 1017 seconds, or 10 billion years at the present rate. The process of energy generation results from the enormous pressure and density at the centre of the Sun, which makes it possible for nuclei to overcome electrostatic repulsion.

This is shown symbolically on the first line of equation 1, in which e− is an electron and ν is a subatomic particle known as a neutrino. While this is a rare event, hydrogen atoms are so numerous that it is the main solar energy source.

The net result is that four hydrogen atoms are fused into one helium atom. The energy is carried off by gamma-ray photons (γ) and neutrinos, ν.

Equation 1 shows that for every two hydrogen atoms converted, one neutrino of average energy 0.26 MeV carrying 1.3 percent of the total energy released is produced. This produces a flux of 8 × 1010 neutrinos per square centimetre per second at Earth.

The solar neutrinos in equation 1 had an energy (less than 0.42 MeV) that was too low to be detected by this experiment. however, subsequent processes produced higher energy neutrinos that Davis’s experiment could detect.

This discrepancy became known as the solar neutrino problem. One possible reason for the small number detected was that the presumed rates of the subordinate process are not correct.

The existence of such a process would have great significance for nuclear theory, for it requires a small mass for the neutrino. In 2002 results from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, nearly 2,100 metres (6,800 feet) underground in the Creighton nickel mine near Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, showed that the solar neutrinos did change their type and thus that the neutrino had a small mass.

In addition to being carried away as neutrinos, which simply disappear into the cosmos, the energy produced in the core of the Sun takes two other forms as well. Some is released as the kinetic energy of product particles, which heats the gases in the core, while some travels outward as gamma-ray photons until they are absorbed and reradiated by the local atoms.

The density is so high that the photons travel only a few millimetres before they are scattered. Farther out the nuclei have electrons attached, so they can absorb and reemit the photons, but the effect is the same: the photons take a so-called random walk outward until they escape from the Sun.

As the average mean free path in the Sun is about 10 centimetres (4 inches), the photon must take 5 × 1019 steps to travel 7 × 1010 centimetres. Even at the speed of light this process takes 170,000 years, and so the light seen today was generated long ago.

As photons are absorbed by the outer portion of the Sun, the temperature gradient increases and convection occurs. Great currents of hot plasma, or ionized gas, carry heat upward.

The ionization of hydrogen plays an important role in the transport of energy through the Sun. Atoms are ionized at the bottom of the convective zone and are carried upward to cooler regions, where they recombine and liberate the energy of ionization.

1 THE SUN The sun consists largely of hydrogen gas. Its energy comes from nuclear fusion of hydrogen to helium.

Really really hot. But all of the heat and light coming from the Sun comes from the fusion process happening deep inside the core of the Sun where pressures are million of times more than the surface of the Earth, and the temperature reaches more than 15 million Kelvin.

2 The earth is tilted 23½ º 24 hour daylight and 24 hour darkness. 3 WHAT CAUSES SEASONS.

4 Earth revolves around the sun tilted on its axis. The angle at which the sun’s rays strike each part of Earth’s surface changes as Earth moves through its orbit.

5 SOLSTICES 1. Summer Solstice—sun shines the longest on this day…occurs June 22 in the northern hemisphere 2.

6 EQUINOXES 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness on equinox days 1. Spring equinox occurs on March 21st in the northern hemisphere 2.

7 THE SUN The largest object in the solar system, in both size and mass Contains 99% of all the mass in the solar system…made up of hydrogen and helium 109 Earths lined up edge to edge to fit across the Sun Nothing “solid” about the sun… its interior is plasma —the 4th state of matter…solid, liquid, gas, plasma (ionized gas).

Chromosphere is only visible during a solar eclipse or with special filters…appears as a red circle around the sun during the eclipse. 9.

Corona is only visible during a solar eclipse or with special filters…appears as white glow that extends several million miles into space. 11 The Sun’s Activity 1.

The solar wind is deflected by the earth’s magnetic field, however this is what causes the northern and southern lights.

Sunspots are cooler areas on the photosphere that last for about 2 months. 13 3.

Prominences are an arc of gas that is ejected from the chromosphere and rains back to the surface SOLAR FLARE SOLAR PROMINENCE. 14 Sunspots Flare Prominence Solar Wind.

16 A meteoroid is debris located outside of Earth ’ s atmosphere that orbits the sun. A meteor is debris located within Earth ’ s atmosphere that vaporizes … known as a shooting star.

18 Asteroids are usually leftover debris of the formation of the solar system. They orbit the sun between Mars and Jupiter in the asteroid belt which separates the 2 types of planets.

19 AMAZING EARTH SCIENCE FACTS 1.____________ Solstice is June 21st (longest day). 2.____________ Solstice is December 21st (shortest day) 3.____________ occur when the sun is directly over the equator….Spring is March 21st and Fall is September 22nd.

5.One _____ is the distance from the sun to the earth…93 million miles. Summer Winter Equinoxes hydrogen helium AU.

Nuclear fusion has been the talk of the town lately because of some milestone breakthroughs bringing us closer to a world with the possibility of infinite free energy. Nuclear fusion is the process by which two atoms collide and fuse, forming another element.

To put that into perspective, the surface of the sun is 9,941 degrees F. The core temperature of the sun is also around 27 million degrees F, while the corona, the outer part, is 2 million degrees Fahrenheit.

During this fusion reaction, huge amounts of energy are released, and this process powers the sun and other stars. However, for the reaction to occur in the first place, large amounts of energy are needed inside the system to get the atoms to collide.

“In the fusion experiment at the National Ignition Facility [NIF], it was reported that it reached 3 million Celsius [5.4 million F],” Carolyn Kuranz, a director of the University of Michigan’s Center for Laboratory Astrophysics and a professor of nuclear engineering and radiological sciences and applied physics, told Newsweek.

Most fusion occurs at the sun’s core (27 million degrees F). “In nature, fusion only occurs in the cores of stars,” Kuranz said.

Other than inside stars, nuclear fusion is being slowly perfected on Earth, with several research groups around the globe working on ways to utilize this reaction to produce large amounts of energy to use as electricity. Nuclear fusion occurs inside the core of stars because that is the region with the highest temperature.

This is so that the cores of the hydrogen atoms have enough energy that when they collide, rather than repelling each other they fuse to form helium. “The temperature [for fusion to occur] can vary depending on many parameters, but it must be hot, adding that what is called “cold” fusion is largely science fiction.

Simple and lucid explanation of nuclear fusion by @bbc. pic.twitter.com/vcWss4B3u5.

Over millions of years, more hydrogen gas is pulled into the spinning cloud, and the center gets hotter and hotter. Once the temperature crosses the crucial 27 million F point, fusion begins and the cloud of gas becomes a protostar.

On Earth, we input the energy using lasers. In December 2022, the NIF, which is at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, announced that it had achieved “net energy gain” for the first time.

While stars need a temperature of 27 million degrees F to begin fusion, the temperature required in Earth labs is much higher. “In our magnetic confinement fusion devices..the plasma is confined by magnets at a lower pressure, so we need a higher temperature instead, more than 100 million K on Earth compared to 15 million K in the sun,” Tom Berry, a nuclear radiation analyst at the U.K.

“The fusion is initiated by heating the plasma, primarily with a high initial current through the central solenoid, the magnet in the center of the ring, but also with other heating devices,” Berry said.

This is because the NIF’s experiments use a different way to achieve fusion, called inertial confinement. “In any fusion approach, the key condition is to keep the hot fuel in contact for a sufficiently long time,” said Gianluca Gregori, a professor of physics at the University of Oxford.

This is the fusion approach used at the National Ignition Facility last month. It requires the thousandfold compression of matter to ultra-high densities and temperatures to mimic the compressional effect of gravity in the sun, nature’s very effective nuclear fusion reactor.”.

When two hydrogen nuclei are close, even for this short duration, Gregori said, “the strong but short-range attractive nuclear force dominates over the tendency of like charges to repel, allowing the nuclei to fuse.”. At JET and ITER, where magnetic confinement fusion is used, “this scheme instead adopts the opposite route.

“Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages,” he continued. “In the inertial confinement case, the main challenge is that the fuel compression is susceptible to fluid instabilities..

“In magnetic confinement fusion, on the other hand, while creating a lower-density fuel is much simpler, keeping it around for the required times is difficult,” Gregori said. “Hence the need for complex magnetic field geometries.

While using nuclear fusion to power our lives is still a long way off, we are getting closer every year. “We’re still a little while off practical fusion energy rolling out to the grid,” Nathan Garland, a lecturer in applied mathematics and physics at Australia’s Griffith University, previously told Newsweek.

He continued: “As we build better magnets, bigger lasers, stronger materials to withstand the immense temperatures and energies required to contain these fusion plasmas—think trying to bottle the core of our sun—we’ll get closer to our eventual goal of generating enough energy out of the fusion reactions that we can harness it into a source suitable for powering our electricity grid.”.

Do you have a question about nuclear fusion. Let us know via [email protected].

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.