Cargando…

Fusion breeding for mid-century, sustainable, carbon free power

Fusion has often been billed as the ultimate 21st century sustainable energy source. However, not only is the pace of the program glacially slow, it seems to recede further and further into the future. One way to speed up the delivery of economical fusion could be to change the objective from pure f...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Manheimer, Wallace
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7498859/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32984613
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e04923
_version_ 1783583602610536448
author Manheimer, Wallace
author_facet Manheimer, Wallace
author_sort Manheimer, Wallace
collection PubMed
description Fusion has often been billed as the ultimate 21st century sustainable energy source. However, not only is the pace of the program glacially slow, it seems to recede further and further into the future. One way to speed up the delivery of economical fusion could be to change the objective from pure fusion, that is the use of the 14 MeV fusion neutron's kinetic energy to boil water; to fusion breeding, that is the former, but also making use of the neutrons 'potential energy' to breed ten times its energy in the form of nuclear fuel to be burned in separate reactors. The requirements of a fusion breeder are greatly relaxed from the requirements for a pure fusion reactor. For instance, ITER, the large tokamak being built by an international consortium in France, could well be the basis of an economical fusion breeder, but would have to clear many more scientific and technical hurdles before it could become the basis for a pure fusion reactor; hurdles it may or may not be able to clear. Even if it clears them, ITER is unlikely to evolve into an economical pure fusion power supply this century. A fusion breeder as could be alternate approach to speed the delivery of economical of fusion power.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-7498859
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2020
publisher Elsevier
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-74988592020-09-25 Fusion breeding for mid-century, sustainable, carbon free power Manheimer, Wallace Heliyon Research Article Fusion has often been billed as the ultimate 21st century sustainable energy source. However, not only is the pace of the program glacially slow, it seems to recede further and further into the future. One way to speed up the delivery of economical fusion could be to change the objective from pure fusion, that is the use of the 14 MeV fusion neutron's kinetic energy to boil water; to fusion breeding, that is the former, but also making use of the neutrons 'potential energy' to breed ten times its energy in the form of nuclear fuel to be burned in separate reactors. The requirements of a fusion breeder are greatly relaxed from the requirements for a pure fusion reactor. For instance, ITER, the large tokamak being built by an international consortium in France, could well be the basis of an economical fusion breeder, but would have to clear many more scientific and technical hurdles before it could become the basis for a pure fusion reactor; hurdles it may or may not be able to clear. Even if it clears them, ITER is unlikely to evolve into an economical pure fusion power supply this century. A fusion breeder as could be alternate approach to speed the delivery of economical of fusion power. Elsevier 2020-09-14 /pmc/articles/PMC7498859/ /pubmed/32984613 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e04923 Text en © 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
spellingShingle Research Article
Manheimer, Wallace
Fusion breeding for mid-century, sustainable, carbon free power
title Fusion breeding for mid-century, sustainable, carbon free power
title_full Fusion breeding for mid-century, sustainable, carbon free power
title_fullStr Fusion breeding for mid-century, sustainable, carbon free power
title_full_unstemmed Fusion breeding for mid-century, sustainable, carbon free power
title_short Fusion breeding for mid-century, sustainable, carbon free power
title_sort fusion breeding for mid-century, sustainable, carbon free power
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7498859/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32984613
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e04923
work_keys_str_mv AT manheimerwallace fusionbreedingformidcenturysustainablecarbonfreepower