Can energy generated from nuclear fusion react to solve the climate change crisis?

Can the energy generated by the nuclear fusion reaction solve the climate change crisis?

The scientific community welcomed the achievement made by a group of American scientists in their research on “nuclear fusion”, as it considered what they achieved to be a major advance in employing the technologyNuclear fusion in energy generation, thus representing a milestone on the road towards... A future of unlimited energy and virtually Net Zero Emissions.

To simplify the matter, nuclear fusion reactions are the same reactions that occur in the sun and other stars and are responsible for generating energy for these stars. In a nuclear fusion reaction, two light atomic nuclei fuse to form one heavier atomic nucleus, and this process releases energy. Because the total mass of the resulting single nucleus is less than the sum of the masses of the two original nuclei, so the difference in mass is converted into energy.

The new scientific breakthrough in thefield of energy generationfrom nuclear fusion could have a major role in shifting the reliance in electricity production from fossil fuels to this new technology, but this is certainly not the case. This means that the days of burning fossil fuels will soon end, as the technology is still in the process of research and development.

A wonderful achievement

There is no doubt that this major scientific achievement is considered an important step towards a long-standing dream, this dream that has captured the imagination of dozens of scientists throughout the ages, which is the ability to mimic the way in which the sun generates the energy that sustains life on Earth, and to control This process is for the benefit of humanity.

US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a press conference after the major achievement, atLawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California: “This breakthrough will go down in the history books.”

The scientists working on this huge experiment at the Livermore Laboratory used lasers. To fuse the nuclei of two hydrogen isotopes into the nucleus of the helium element, and for the first time, the reaction released more energy than what was introduced by the laser, which is extremely important.

For nearly a century, scientists around the world have been trying to develop and control nuclear fusion reactions (unlike the uncontrollable nuclear fusion reaction that takes place in hydrogen bombs).

While there has been a lot of progress in research, there remains a fundamental obstacle, which is that the nuclear fusion reaction requires a large amount of energy, with temperatures reaching millions of degrees necessary for it to occur, to the point that none of the experiments produced It had a net energy positive (the reactions consumed more energy than they produced), but that hurdle is out of the way now, at least for this type of laser-based nuclear fusion.

The new revelation makes it easier to envision a future of fusion nuclear power plants that essentially won't produce carbon dioxide or other Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) that warm the planet. These future plants will also have advantages over current nuclear plants that rely on the nuclear fission reaction of atoms rather than their fusion, as the fuel needed for the fusion reaction is more readily available and the resulting radioactive waste is less dangerous and problematic.

There are still huge obstacles

An experiment like the one conducted at Livermore Laboratory, in which a single tiny granule was vaporized by “192 laser beams” is one thing, but a power plant that vaporizes thousands of granules and safely extracts the emitted energy to convert it into electricity is something else entirely, and this does not This means that nuclear fusion cannot be transformed in this innovative way into power plants in the future, but this will take some time... and most likely a lot of time.

The same applies to the other main approach developed at the ITER laboratory in southern France for nuclear fusion, which uses huge, powerful “electromagnets” to confine a cloud of hydrogen gas stripped of its electrons; Which raises temperatures to the point where nuclear fusion can occur, as the matter is also still an experiment that requires more research and development so that we can apply it on a commercial scale.

The world needs a sharp reduction in emissions immediately and urgently. This is to limit the temperature rise to “1.5 degrees Celsius” above nineteenth-century levels, which is the strictest limit that resulted from the climate talks in Paris in 2015, and emissions must also reach close to zero by the year 2050.

So, even if fusion power plants become a reality, it likely will not happen in time to help stave off the worsening near-term effects of climate change. Many climate scientists and policymakers say it would be much better to focus on currently available renewable energy technologies such as solar and wind; To help reach these emissions targets.

When can energy begin to flow?

The important question here, after taking into account the obstacles we mentioned, is: If nuclear fusion is not a quick solution to the climate, can it be a long-term solution to the world’s energy needs? Maybe, but cost may present a new hurdle. To put things in more context, the laboratory in Livermore was built for research and experimentation purposes for $3.5 billion, while the ITER laboratory in France has so far cost more than $20 billion, so it is not clear whether the world can afford fusion nuclear power plants that take either method. Testers.

In recent years, there has been an increase in private efforts - on a smaller level - to develop research on the power of nuclear fusion, and so far more than 30 companies are working on this technology, about a third of these companies are located in the United States, and perhaps the coming years will give a clearer picture of the progress in developing this technology And its feasibility in the long term.

In the same context, most companies working on developing this technology predict that nuclear fusion will provide electricity for use sometime in the 2030s. Perhaps this may be an ambitious goal rather than a realistic one, but if nuclear fusion energy were to become commercially viable, perhaps one day we might achieve the long-awaited dream of “an adequate, environmentally friendly, and inexhaustible source of energy.”