Future is fusion? The quest to build a star on Earth

Published On : 2024-11-17T07:26:42+0530 [ IST ] | Author : Mayur_Tembhare
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The quest for fusion energy- the clean, potentially limitless source that could end mankind's power woes- is at least a century old. Now a handful of startups say we are closer than ever to making it happen.

But closer than ever does not necessarily mean close. Fusion's history is a graveyard of missed deadlines and thwarted milestones. The sunny view is startups moving more quickly than govt labs could.

First you need to heat a puff of gas to over 100 million degrees Celsius. This makes the gas so hot that the electrons are ripped out of their atoms. So hot that the gas enters the plasma state of matter.

With enough heat the atoms start to fuse. Make your plasma hold onto this heat for long enough and at high enough pressure and more energy comes out than you put in to heat it up. Fusion is the opposite of the fission process that powers today's nuclear plants. Atoms don't split; they weld together. The basic fuel isn'

Plasma wriggles and squirms like a snake of superhot Jell-O so you have to hold it steady otherwise it could melt your equipment. Or it might just fall apart. Inside the Sun gravity holds the plasma together. On Earth people use superstrong magnets or lasers.

At the innermost sanctum ofCommonwealth Fusion Systems' enormous new building in the Massachusetts countryside a colossal machine will soon be placed at the altar. In a circle around its core will sit 18 giant magnets each powerful enough to hoist an aircraft carrier. When the machine is turned on the magnetic forces within will be as strong as

If there's a big fish in the commercial fusion pond Commonwealth is it. Since its founding in 2018 Commonwealth has raised over $2 billion. Its next machine, ARC, is the one it says will generate electricity for paying customers in the early 2030s.

The biggest tokamak being built anywhere on Earth, a multinational project in France called ITER, is on track to cost tens of billions of dollars and won't be ready for experiments until the mid-2030s.

But most of today's startups aren't following ITER and Commonwealth models they think they can do fusion more cheaply and easily using other types of machines.

Type One Energy and Thea Energy are working on stellarators similar to tokamaks but twisted and complexly rippled like a doughnut as imagined by Salvador Dali. Realta Fusion is building a reactor that the company's co-founder Cary Forest calls "Tootsie Roll shaped

In an office park near Seattle Zap Energy is making fusion devices in which filaments of plasma are zapped with electricity. Less than a mile away Helion Energy is working on a fusion machine that shoots two rings of plasma at each other. Helion aims to generate electricity for Microsoft

What worries researchers is how much somefusion startups are promising and how soon. Even if pilot plants are successful there's still more to do before those will be ready to meet a serious share of the globe's electricity needs

Source : Reporters From Sunrise Chronicles

Tags : by , Realta Fusion , machinemuch somefusion startupsare promising , This , Making , Soon , Russian , Celsius , There , Type One Energy ,

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