The Progress made in the Different Fields of Nuclear Fusion

When I was about 10, I recall hearing that nuclear fusion power would become a reality "in about thirty years". The estimate has increased steadily since then, and now, forty odd years on, we hear that fusion power will come on-stream "in about fifty years". So, what is the real likelihood of fusion-based power stations coming to our aid in averting the imminent energy crisis? Getting two nuclei to fuse is not easy, since both carry a positive charge and hence their natural propensity is to repel one another. Therefore, a lot of energy is required to force them together so that they can fuse. To achieve this, suitable conditions of extremely high temperature, comparable to those found in stars, must be met. A specific temperature must be reached in order for particular nuclei to fuse with one another. This is termed the "critical ignition temperature", and is around 400 million degrees centigrade for two deuterium nuclei to fuse, while a more modest 100 million degrees is sufficient for a deuterium nucleus to fuse with a tritium nucleus. For this reason, it is deuterium-tritium fusion that is most sought after, since it should be most easily achieved and sustained.

One disadvantage of tritium is that it is radioactive and decays with a half-life of about 12 years, and consequently, it exists naturally in only negligible amounts. However, tritium may be "bred" from lithium using neutrons produced in an initial deuterium-tritium fusion. Ideally, the process would become self-sustaining, with lithium fuel being burned via conversion to tritium, which then fuses with deuterium, releasing more neutrons. While not unlimited, there are sufficient known resources of lithium to fire a global fusion programme for about a thousand years, mindful that there are many other uses for lithium, ranging for various types of battery to medication for schizophrenics. The supply would be effectively limitless if lithium could be extracted from the oceans.

In a working scenario, some of the energy produced by fusion would be required to maintain the high temperature of the fuel such that the fusion process becomes continuous. At the temperature of around 100 - 300 million degrees, the deuterium/lithium/tritium mixture will exist in the form of a plasma, in which the nuclei are naked (having lost their initial atomic electron clouds) and are hence exposed to fuse with one another.

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