New fusion reactors could be commercially available within ten years: endless energy sources
Source: China Nuclear Network Date: 2015-08-21
Sina Science and Technology News August 20, Beijing time, according to foreign media reports, scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently claimed that they have designed a new type of nuclear fusion reactor that can achieve commercial scale applications and named it "ARC" . Researchers believe that the "ARC" fusion reactor can provide endless energy after completion, and this goal can be achieved within ten years.
According to scientists, the "ARC" fusion reactor is a Tokamak-type system, which is like a donut. The new nuclear fusion reactor will be able to provide more energy than larger reactors in other previous designs, such as the one used by Tony Stark in the movie Iron Man.
The tritium "ARC" fusion reactor uses two hydrogen atoms, deuterium and tritium. Scientists first inject deuterium and tritium into the reactor's containment, and then increase the energy for it to release electrons from the host atoms and form a plasma. This process will release huge amounts of energy. Scientists say that if this technology can be perfected, it will be able to provide endless energy and completely solve the global energy crisis.
The Tokamak reactor is one of all the most promising nuclear fusion reactors. The Tokamak system is a donut-like vacuum chamber. The fuel is heated above 150 million degrees Celsius to form a hot plasma. Then the super strong magnetic field is used to drive the plasma away from the inner wall of the containment. There is a superconducting coil around the containment, which is responsible for generating a super strong magnetic field. However, to date, such coils have been a major technical bottleneck in all nuclear fusion reactor designs.
The "ARC" fusion reactor is slightly different from other Tokamak-type systems because it uses a new commercially available superconductor made of rare earth barium copper-oxygen materials. This kind of coil can generate a stronger magnetic field, which can better confine superthermal plasma, make the reactor smaller, cheaper, and easier to build.
"ARC" new type nuclear fusion reactor can be used for basic research of nuclear fusion, and can also be used as a prototype of nuclear fusion power plant. According to researchers, as the magnetic field energy increases, the energy produced by nuclear fusion is multiplied to the fourth power. This means that doubling the magnetic field energy will increase the fusion energy by 16 times. "Any small increase in magnetic field energy will bring you huge gains," explained MIT research team member Brandon Solbohm. Although this new superconductor does not increase the magnetic field energy to two Times. However, their magnetic field strength is enough to increase the energy produced by nuclear fusion to 10 times that of standard superconducting technology. This huge progress will promote the optimization and improvement of reactor design solutions.
Currently, the world's most powerful fusion reactor is the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), which is located in France and is currently under construction. The construction budget for the reactor is about $ 40 billion. The "ARC" fusion reactor is a 500 MW reactor with a diameter about half that of the "ITER" reactor. "ARC" has a large radius of 3.3 meters and a small radius of 1.1 meters. Despite the differences in size and magnetic field strength, the physical principles of "ARC" and "ITER" are exactly the same.
According to the current design scheme, the "ARC" fusion reactor will generate about three times the energy required to maintain its operation. However, Solbohm believes that as the system improves, this multiple will be five to six times. Currently, no reactor has been able to produce such high energy. Therefore, the research team believes that this will be a major breakthrough in nuclear fusion technology. Such a reactor, just one generator of electricity is enough to meet the daily use of 100,000 people. The research team says that within five years, devices of similar size and complexity will be available.
"King Fusion Energy will be one of the most important energy sources on the planet in the 22nd century," said David Kingham, chief executive of Tokamak Energy.