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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...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Elsevier
2020
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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 |
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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 |