Fusion Power: Generating electricity by using heat from nuclear fusion reactions

By Fouad Sabry

What Is Fusion Power

Fusion power is a kind of power production that has been suggested in recent years that would produce electricity by using the heat produced by nuclear fusion processes. During the process of nuclear fusion, two lighter atomic nuclei unite to produce one heavier atomic nucleus, which also results in the release of energy. Fusion reactors are the machines that are built to extract energy from fusion reactions.

How You Will Benefit

(I) Insights, and validations about the following topics:

Chapter 1: Fusion power

Chapter 2: Nuclear fusion

Chapter 3: Tokamak

Chapter 4: Thermonuclear fusion

Chapter 5: Fusion rocket

Chapter 6: Inertial confinement fusion

Chapter 7: Timeline of nuclear fusion

Chapter 8: ITER

Chapter 9: Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor

Chapter 10: Aneutronic fusion

Chapter 11: Fusion energy gain factor

Chapter 12: Magnetic confinement fusion

Chapter 13: DEMOnstration Power Plant

Chapter 14: Inertial fusion power plant

Chapter 15: Magnetized target fusion

Chapter 16: Nuclear fusion-fission hybrid

Chapter 17: Magnetized Liner Inertial Fusion

Chapter 18: Plasma-facing material

Chapter 19: Laser Inertial Fusion Energy

Chapter 20: China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor

Chapter 21: History of nuclear fusion

(II) Answering the public top questions about fusion power.

(III) Real world examples for the usage of fusion power in many fields.

(IV) 17 appendices to explain, briefly, 266 emerging technologies in each industry to have 360-degree full understanding of fusion power' technologies.

Who This Book Is For

Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information for any kind of fusion power.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Billion Knowledgeable
• Release date: Oct 16, 2022

Book preview

Copyright

Fusion Power Copyright © 2022 by Fouad Sabry. All Rights Reserved.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

Cover designed by Fouad Sabry.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Bonus

You can send an email to [e-mail] with the subject line Fusion Power: Generating electricity by using heat from nuclear fusion reactions, and you will receive an email which contains the first few chapters of this book.

Fouad Sabry

Visit 1BK website at

www.1BKOfficial.org

Preface

Why did I write this book?

The story of writing this book started on 1989, when I was a student in the Secondary School of Advanced Students.

It is remarkably like the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Schools, which are now available in many advanced countries.

STEM is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines — science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — in an interdisciplinary and applied approach. This term is typically used to address an education policy or a curriculum choice in schools. It has implications for workforce development, national security concerns and immigration policy.

There was a weekly class in the library, where each student is free to choose any book and read for 1 hour. The objective of the class is to encourage the students to read subjects other than the educational curriculum.

In the library, while I was looking at the books on the shelves, I noticed huge books, total of 5,000 pages in 5 parts. The books name is The Encyclopedia of Technology, which describes everything around us, from absolute zero to semiconductors, almost every technology, at that time, was explained with colorful illustrations and simple words. I started to read the encyclopedia, and of course, I was not able to finish it in the 1-hour weekly class.

So, I convinced my father to buy the encyclopedia. My father bought all the technology tools for me in the beginning of my life, the first computer and the first technology encyclopedia, and both have a great impact on myself and my career.

I have finished the entire encyclopedia in the same summer vacation of this year, and then I started to see how the universe works and to how to apply that knowledge to everyday problems.

My passion to the technology started mor than 30 years ago and still the journey goes on.

This book is part of The Encyclopedia of Emerging Technologies which is my attempt to give the readers the same amazing experience I had when I was in high school, but instead of 20th century technologies, I am more interested in the 21st century emerging technologies, applications, and industry solutions.

The Encyclopedia of Emerging Technologies will consist of 365 books, each book will be focused on one single emerging technology. You can read the list of emerging technologies and their categorization by industry in the part of Coming Soon, at the end of the book.

365 books to give the readers the chance to increase their knowledge on one single emerging technology every day within the course of one year period.

Introduction

How did I write this book?

In every book of The Encyclopedia of Emerging Technologies, I am trying to get instant, raw search insights, direct from the minds of the people, trying to answer their questions about the emerging technology.

There are 3 billion Google searches every day, and 20% of those have never been seen before. They are like a direct line to the people thoughts.

Sometimes that’s ‘How do I remove paper jam’. Other times, it is the wrenching fears and secret hankerings they would only ever dare share with Google.

In my pursuit to discover an untapped goldmine of content ideas about Fusion Power, I use many tools to listen into autocomplete data from search engines like Google, then quickly cranks out every useful phrase and question, the people are asking around the keyword Fusion Power.

It is a goldmine of people insight, I can use to create fresh, ultra-useful content, products, and services. The kind people, like you, really want.

People searches are the most important dataset ever collected on the human psyche. Therefore, this book is a live product, and constantly updated by more and more answers for new questions about Fusion Power, asked by people, just like you and me, wondering about this new emerging technology and would like to know more about it.

The approach for writing this book is to get a deeper level of understanding of how people search around Fusion Power, revealing questions and queries which I would not necessarily think off the top of my head, and answering these questions in super easy and digestible words, and to navigate the book around in a straightforward way.

So, when it comes to writing this book, I have ensured that it is as optimized and targeted as possible. This book purpose is helping the people to further understand and grow their knowledge about Fusion Power. I am trying to answer people’s questions as closely as possible and showing a lot more.

It is a fantastic, and beautiful way to explore questions and problems that the people have and answer them directly, and add insight, validation, and creativity to the content of the book – even pitches and proposals. The book uncovers rich, less crowded, and sometimes surprising areas of research demand I would not otherwise reach. There is no doubt that, it is expected to increase the knowledge of the potential readers’ minds, after reading the book using this approach.

I have applied a unique approach to make the content of this book always fresh. This approach depends on listening to the people minds, by using the search listening tools. This approach helped me to:

Meet the readers exactly where they are, so I can create relevant content that strikes a chord and drives more understanding to the topic.

Keep my finger firmly on the pulse, so I can get updates when people talk about this emerging technology in new ways, and monitor trends over time.

Uncover hidden treasures of questions need answers about the emerging technology to discover unexpected insights and hidden niches that boost the relevancy of the content and give it a winning edge.

The building block for writing this book include the following:

(1) I have stopped wasting the time on gutfeel and guesswork about the content wanted by the readers, filled the book content with what the people need and said goodbye to the endless content ideas based on speculations.

(2) I have made solid decisions, and taken fewer risks, to get front row seats to what people want to read and want to know — in real time — and use search data to make bold decisions, about which topics to include and which topics to exclude.

(3) I have streamlined my content production to identify content ideas without manually having to sift through individual opinions to save days and even weeks of time.

It is wonderful to help the people to increase their knowledge in a straightforward way by just answering their questions.

I think the approach of writing of this book is unique as it collates, and tracks the important questions being asked by the readers on search engines.

Acknowledgments

Writing a book is harder than I thought and more rewarding than I could have ever imagined. None of this would have been possible without the work completed by prestigious researchers, and I would like to acknowledge their efforts to increase the knowledge of the public about this emerging technology.

Dedication

To the enlightened, the ones who see things differently, and want the world to be better -- they are not fond of the status quo or the existing state. You can disagree with them too much, and you can argue with them even more, but you cannot ignore them, and you cannot underestimate them, because they always change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones or amateur, others see genius and innovators, because the ones who are enlightened enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do, and lead the people to the enlightenment.

Epigraph

Fusion power is a kind of power production that has been suggested in recent years that would produce electricity by using the heat produced by nuclear fusion processes. During the process of nuclear fusion, two lighter atomic nuclei unite to produce one heavier atomic nucleus, which also results in the release of energy. Fusion reactors are the machines that are built to extract energy from fusion reactions.

Table of Contents

Copyright

Bonus

Preface

Introduction

Acknowledgments

Dedication

Epigraph

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Fusion power

Chapter 2: Nuclear fusion

Chapter 3: Tokamak

Chapter 4: Thermonuclear fusion

Chapter 5: Fusion rocket

Chapter 6: Inertial confinement fusion

Chapter 7: Timeline of nuclear fusion

Chapter 8: ITER

Chapter 9: Inertial electrostatic confinement

Chapter 10: Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor

Chapter 11: Aneutronic fusion

Chapter 12: Fusion energy gain factor

Chapter 13: Magnetic confinement fusion

Chapter 14: Inertial fusion power plant

Chapter 15: Magnetized target fusion

Chapter 16: Nuclear fusion–fission hybrid

Chapter 17: Magnetized Liner Inertial Fusion

Chapter 18: Plasma-facing material

Chapter 19: Laser Inertial Fusion Energy

Chapter 20: China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor

Chapter 21: History of nuclear fusion

Epilogue

About the Author

Coming Soon

Appendices: Emerging Technologies in Each Industry

Chapter 1: Fusion power

Fusion power is a kind of power production that has been suggested in recent years that would produce electricity by using the heat produced by nuclear fusion processes. During the process of nuclear fusion, two lighter atomic nuclei unite to produce one heavier atomic nucleus, which also results in the release of energy. Fusion reactors are the names given to the machines that are meant to harness this energy.

To generate a plasma that is conducive to fusion, fusion procedures need to have fuel, as well as an enclosed environment that has the necessary temperature, pressure, and amount of time that the environment is confined. The Lawson criteria refers to the specific combination of these parameters that leads to the creation of a system that generates electricity. Hydrogen is the most prevalent kind of fuel found in stars, and gravity allows for exceptionally lengthy confinement durations, which are necessary to attain the conditions required for the generation of fusion energy. Because heavy hydrogen isotopes like deuterium and tritium (and especially a mixture of the two) react more easily than protium, the most common hydrogen isotope, proposed fusion reactors typically make use of these heavy hydrogen isotopes. This allows them to meet the requirements of the Lawson criterion while operating under less stringent conditions. The majority of designs strive to heat their fuel to an approximate temperature of one hundred million degrees, which provides a significant obstacle in the process of developing a good design.

It is anticipated that nuclear fusion will have numerous benefits over nuclear fission when it comes to being a source of electricity. These include less radioactivity while the plant is operating, decreased amounts of high-level nuclear waste, greater levels of safety, and abundant supply of fuel. However, it has been found to be challenging to achieve the essential combination of temperature, pressure, and time in a way that is both practical and cost-effective. The 1940s saw the beginning of research on fusion reactors; however, to this day, no design has been able to achieve a fusion power output that is greater than the electrical power input. Managing the neutrons that are produced throughout the reaction is a second difficulty that impacts frequent reactions. These neutrons, which are employed to make up many of the components found inside the reaction chamber, deteriorate with time.

Researchers interested in fusion have looked at a number of different confinement ideas. In the beginning, much of the focus was placed on three primary systems: the z-pinch, the stellarator, and the magnetic mirror. The tokamak and the inertial confinement (ICF) by laser are the two designs that are now in the lead. The ITER tokamak in France and the National Ignition Facility (NIF) laser in the United States are two examples of extremely large-scale research projects that are now investigating both of these concepts. Researchers are also looking at different designs to see if they can find any that are more cost-effective. There is a growing interest in magnetic target fusion and inertial electrostatic confinement, as well as novel versions of the stellarator, among these possibilities.

When two or more atomic nuclei meet near enough to one another for an extended period of time, fusion processes may take place because the nuclear attraction drawing them together is stronger than the electrostatic force pushing them away. This results in the creation of heavier nuclei. The process is endothermic, which means that more energy must be added in order for it to occur for nuclei heavier than iron-56. The heavy nuclei that are larger than those of iron have a much higher number of protons, which results in a stronger repulsive force. When nuclei with a mass less than iron-56 combine, an exothermic event occurs, which results in the release of energy. Because hydrogen's nucleus only contains a single proton, achieving fusion with it involves the least amount of work and results in the highest amount of net energy production. Hydrogen is the simplest fuel to completely ionize since it only has one electron in its valence shell.

While the repulsive electrostatic force between nuclei works over larger distances, the strong force only acts over very small distances (at most one femtometer, which is the diameter of one proton or neutron). In order for there to be fusion, the fuel atoms need to be provided with a sufficient amount of kinetic energy so that they may approach each other near enough for the strong force to triumph over the electrostatic repulsion that exists between them. The Coulomb barrier refers to the amount of kinetic energy that must be present in order to get the fuel atoms close enough together. Providing this energy may be accomplished in a number of ways, for as by accelerating atoms in a particle accelerator or by subjecting them to very high temperatures.

When an atom's temperature is raised to a level that is higher than its ionization energy, its electrons are removed, leaving behind just the nucleus. Ionization is the name given to this process, and the ion is the name given to the nucleus that is produced as a consequence. Plasma is the name given to the product of this process, which is a heated cloud of ions and free electrons that were once linked to them. Plasmas are electrically conductive and magnetically tunable due to the separation of the charges that make up the plasma. In order to contain the particles as they get heated, several fusion devices make use of this property.

The cross-sectional area of a reaction, denoted σ, determines the likelihood that a fusion reaction will take place.

This is dependent on the velocities of the two nuclei in relation to one another.

In most cases, higher relative velocities result in an increased likelihood, However, the chance starts to go down again when you get to really high energies.

P_{\text{fusion}}=n_{A}n_{B}\langle \sigma v_{A,B}\rangle E_{\text{fusion}}

where:

P_{\text{fusion}} is the energy made by fusion, in terms of both time and volume

n represents the numerical density, in terms of species A or B, of the particles that are present in the volume.

\langle \sigma v_{A,B}\rangle is the cross section of that reaction, calculated as an average across all of the two species' velocities v

E_{\text{fusion}} is the energy released by that fusion reaction.

The Lawson criteria illustrates how the amount of energy produced by a given fuel changes depending on factors such as its temperature, density, and the speed at which it collides. This equation played a significant role in John Lawson's investigation of how fusion may be achieved using a heated plasma. Lawson hypothesized that there would be a balance of energy, as indicated below.

P_\text{out} = \eta_\text{capture}\left(P_\text{fusion} - P_\text{conduction} - P_\text{radiation}\right)

where:

P_{{\text{out}}} is the net power from fusion

{\displaystyle \eta _{\text{capture}}} is the efficiency of capturing the output of the fusion

P_{\text{fusion}} is the rate of energy generated by the fusion reactions

{\displaystyle P_{\text{conduction}}} is the conduction losses as energetic mass leaves the plasma

{\displaystyle P_{\text{radiation}}} is the radiation losses as energy leaves as light.

Conduction and radiation both contribute to the depletion of energy in plasma clouds. When ions, electrons, or neutrals collide with other substances—typically a surface of the device—and transmit some of their kinetic energy to the other atoms, this process is known as conduction. The energy that escapes the cloud in the form of light is called radiation. Temperature has a positive correlation with radiation. These losses are something that fusion power systems need to be able to overcome.

According to the Lawson criteria, a device that maintains a thermalized and quasi-neutral plasma must provide sufficient energy to compensate for the amount of energy that is lost by the device. The temperature, and consequently the reaction rate on a per-particle basis, the density of particles within that volume, and finally the confinement time, which is the length of time that energy stays within the volume, all play a role in determining the total amount of energy that is released in a specific volume. The confinement time was the primary concern that remained after addressing the other variables. Plasmas that are subjected to intense magnetic fields are susceptible to a variety of intrinsic instabilities, which need to be suppressed in order to achieve durations that are practical. The rate of leakage that occurs as a result of classical diffusion may be slowed down by increasing the capacity of the reactor, which is one method for accomplishing this goal. This is the reason why ITER is so massive.

In contrast, inertial confinement systems reach desirable triple product values by having greater densities and shorter confinement intervals than other types of systems. The initial frozen hydrogen fuel load for the NIF has a density that is lower than that of water, and this density is boosted to around one hundred times that of lead. Under these circumstances, the rate of fusion is so rapid that the fuel will fuse in the microseconds it takes for the heat produced by the reactions to blast the fuel apart. In other words, the rate of fusion is faster than the rate at which the fuel will blow apart. The NIF is likewise rather massive, but this is not an intrinsic property of the fusion process; rather, it is due to the design of its driver..

There have been many different ideas floated on how to collect the energy that is produced by fusion. The first step is to simply heat up the liquid. The D-T reaction, which is widely targeted, is responsible for the release of a significant portion of its energy as fast-moving neutrons. The neutron, which has no electrical charge, is unaffected by the confinement system since it has no charge. In the majority of designs, it is contained inside a substantial blanket of lithium that wraps around the core of the reactor. When a neutron with a high energy hits the blanket, it causes it to heat up. After that, it undergoes active cooling with a working fluid, which in turn spins a turbine that generates electricity.

Another proposal, known as a fission-fusion hybrid, was put forth in which the neutrons would be used to breed fission fuel inside a blanket of radioactive waste. This design was presented. In these systems, the power production is increased due to the fission events, and the power is harvested utilizing methods that are comparable to those found in traditional fission reactors.

Ionized gas is known as plasma, and it is able to carry electricity. The process of fusion makes use of several plasma features, including:

Plasma that spontaneously organizes itself is a good conductor of electric and magnetic forces. Its movements create fields that, in turn, are able to confine it.

Plasma that is diamagnetic is capable of producing its very own magnetic field on the inside. This may cause it to be diamagnetic by repelling a magnetic field that is applied from the outside.

Magnetic mirrors can reflect plasma when it moves from a low to high density field.:24

It has been shown that a tokomak-based reactor can be controlled by a deep reinforcement learning system. The artificial intelligence was able to control the plasma by manipulating the magnetic coils. Continuous adjustments were made by the system to ensure that it exhibited the desired behavior at all times (more complex than step-based systems). The year 2014 saw the beginning of Google's collaboration with the fusion business TAE Technologies, located in California, to manage the Joint European Torus (JET) and anticipate the behavior of plasma. In addition to this, DeepMind has built a control system using JET.

Tokamak is the method that has received the greatest funding and the most development. Using an internal current, this technique rotates hot plasma inside of a torus that is surrounded on all sides by a magnetic field. ITER will become the biggest tokamak in the world once construction is finished. As of September 2018, it was anticipated that a total of 226 experimental tokamaks were either in the planning stages, had been decommissioned, or were actively running (50).

Another name for the spherical tokamak is the spherical torus. A spherical version of the tokamak that is a variant on the design.

Twisted rings of molten plasma make up the stellarator. Through the use of external magnets, the stellarator makes an effort to simulate the natural winding course of plasma. In 1950, Lyman Spitzer came up with the idea for stellarators, which later grew into four distinct designs: the Torsatron, Heliotron, Heliac, and Helias. One such example is the German gadget known as the Wendelstein 7-X. It is the biggest stellarator in the whole planet.

Internal rings Stellarators produce a twisted plasma by utilizing external magnets, while tokamaks do this by inducing a current in the plasma itself. This twist is provided by a few different kinds of designs that include conductors into the plasma. Early simulations suggested that collisions between the plasma and the supports for the conductors would deplete energy at a rate that was greater than that at which fusion processes could replenish it. A solid superconducting torus that is magnetically levitated within the reactor chamber is used in contemporary variants such as the Levitated Dipole Experiment (LDX).

In the 1960s, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory led by Richard F. Post developed the magnetic mirror. In spite of this, estimates done in the 1970s projected that it was very improbable that