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Sunday, February 22, 2009

Nuclear Fusion - A Star On Earth?


Horizon had a programme last week about the current state of nuclear fusion research and whether it would be possible to get beyond the research phase and supply electricity with it before 2030.

There were some interesting points regarding the actual facts and figures of global energy usage and that alternative energy sources alone can´t plug the gap because of the amount of energy oil contains. There were also some insights into current research such as the mini nuclear blast tests in the Z-machine at the Lawrence Livermore labs and projects in the short term in Korea and in France (ITER). The concept is to ignite a mini-star that is then fed with fusion to glue deuterium and tritium to produce energy and helium.

1 comments:

M. Simon said...

We might get there faster with something like this:

Bussard's IEC Fusion Technology (Polywell Fusion) Explained

Why hasn't Polywell Fusion been funded by the Obama administration?