Nuclear Fusion Technology : Daily Current Affairs

Relevance: GS-3: Science and Technology- developments and their applications and effects in everyday life.

Key phrases: Fusion reactions, Deuterium and Tritium, ITER, EAST-CHINA, ITER-India, Department of Atomic Energy.

Why in News?

Scientists in the United Kingdom have achieved a new milestone in producing nuclear fusion energy, or imitating the way energy is produced in the Sun. Energy by nuclear fusion is one of mankind’s long standing quests as it promises to be low carbon, safer than how nuclear energy is now produced and, with an efficiency that can technically exceed a 100%.

What is Nuclear Fusion Technology?

In a Nuclear fusion process, two lighter atomic nuclei combine to form a heavier nucleus, while releasing energy. Devices designed to harness this energy are known as fusion reactors.
Nuclear Fusion reactions power the Sun and other stars. The process releases energy because the total mass of the resulting single nucleus is less than the mass of the two original nuclei. The leftover mass becomes energy.
The main fuels used in nuclear fusion are deuterium and tritium, both heavy isotopes of hydrogen. Deuterium constitutes a tiny fraction of natural hydrogen, only 0,0153%, and can be extracted inexpensively from seawater. Tritium can be made from lithium, which is also abundant in nature.

Advantages of Nuclear Fusion Technology:

Less nuclear waste : The fusion reactors will not produce high-level nuclear wastes like their fission counterparts, so that disposal will be less of a problem. In addition, the wastes will not be of weapons-grade nuclear materials as is the case in fission reactors.
Carbon neutral : There are no CO2 or other harmful atmospheric emissions from the fusion process, which means that fusion does not contribute to greenhouse gas emissions or global warming.
The 2018 book Comprehensive Energy Systems notes: “Nuclear fusion energy is a good choice as the baseload energy in the future with many advantages, such as inexhaustibility of resources, inherent safety, no long-lived radioactive wastes, and almost no CO2 emissions.”
The potential advantages of nuclear fusion energy are manifold, as it represents a long-term, sustainable, economic and safe energy source for electricity generation.
Fuel is inexpensive and abundant in nature. The amount of deuterium present in one litre of water can in theory produce as much energy as the combustion of 300 litres of oil. This means that there is enough deuterium in the oceans to meet human energy needs for millions of years.

How Nuclear Fusion Technology Works?

In nuclear fusion, you get energy when two atoms join together to form one. Fusion reactors use two different types of hydrogen isotopes for fuel—deuterium and tritium. Deuterium is basic hydrogen and can be easily distilled from water. Tritium is a slightly radioactive isotope of hydrogen consisting of one proton and two neutrons.
One atom of deuterium and one atom of tritium combine to form a helium-4 atom and a neutron. Most of the energy released is in the form of the high-energy neutron.

What is the potential of Nuclear Fusion Technology?

Nuclear fusion energy is also a potential candidate for space travel, especially for high-energy requirements. For the purpose of the transport of astronauts and cargo to Mars and beyond, an innovative concept with a direct utilization of fusion energy via laser ignited (D,T) capsules for propulsion has been suggested by the scientists of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Nuclear fusion powers the sun and all of the stars of the universe. Harnessing fusion energy on earth would provide a practically unlimited amount of renewable energy to supply the needs of the growing world population.

International Initiative on Nuclear Fusion:

International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor : ITER ("The Way" in Latin) is one of the most ambitious energy projects in the world today. In southern France, 35 nations are collaborating to build the world's largest tokamak, a magnetic fusion device that has been designed to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy based on the same principle that powers our Sun and stars. ITER will be the first fusion device to produce net energy.

EAST-CHINA: The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), internal designation HT-7U, is an experimental superconducting tokamak magnetic fusion energy reactor in Hefei, China. China broke the record by keeping the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) by achieving plasma temperature at 120 million Celsius for 101 seconds and 160 million Celsius for 20 seconds, a major step toward the test run of the fusion reactor. It is designed to replicate the nuclear fusion process that occurs naturally in the sun and stars to provide almost infinite clean energy through controlled nuclear fusion, which is often dubbed the "artificial sun."

ITER-India is a special project under Institute for Plasma Research. It is governed by the Empowered Board, which is chaired by the Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy (DAE). India became a full seventh partner of ITER in December 2005. ITER-India, Institute for Plasma Research (IPR), located in Gandhinagar, western India, is the Indian Domestic Agency to design, build and deliver the Indian in-kind contribution to ITER.

How Nuclear fusion on Earth is Different from Sun?

Nuclear fusion is the same process that powers the sun. Deep in the sun’s core, hydrogen atoms are smashed together to form helium, and helium atoms are also smashed together, releasing tremendous amounts of energy. It’s basically gravity powered—the sun is so massive that gravity is strong enough to trigger fusion. About 333,000 times the mass of earth. And it’s huge, about 1.3 million earths could fit inside the sun. The amount of energy it produces is frankly inconceivable at 384.6 yottawatts (3.846×1026 W), or 9.192×1010 megatons of TNT—per second.

A fusion reactor fuses hydrogen atoms into helium atoms, but on a much, much smaller scale. That fusion produces heat, which is used to produce steam to turn a turbine, producing electricity. But it’s very difficult to start a sustained fusion reaction on earth. We don’t have the tremendous amounts of mass and gravity to work with, so scientists use other methods to heat hydrogen up to tremendous temperatures, over 100 million degrees Celsius. That’s about 10 times as hot as the sun. Of course, no material we know of could withstand such high temperatures, so fusion reactors use magnetic fields to contain the super-heated hydrogen. Right now, it takes far more energy to start fusion than you get out of the reactor.

Way forward:

The future of nuclear fusion is uncertain. Fusion research began to make substantial progress in the last decade. This has culminated in recent breakthroughs in magnetic confinement technology, and work on laser and particle beam implosion is also progressing.
Although such developments are encouraging and the potential is great, much work remains to be done and significant contributions from fusion are certainly very far in the future.
From an environmental standpoint, many people hope nuclear fusion will be the long-term clean energy solution. However, it may not be totally free of as yet undefined environmental concerns.

Source: The Hindu

Mains Question:

Q. In the wake of global average temperatures rising and energy demands growing, the nuclear fusion energy can be a sustainable energy solution for future generation. Critically Analyse.