Is nuclear fusion the miracle weapon for the energy and climate problems of the future?

[suchona.kani.z]

Back in the 1980s, scientists announced breakthroughs that turned out not to be such. Now, in December 2022, US researchers have for the first time extracted more energy from nuclear fusion than they put into it. One thing is clear: coal and oil will be obsolete in the long term. The world must become climate neutral. This is the only way the earth can remain habitable in the long term - climate researchers agree on this. Wind, hydropower, biomass and sunlight are ready for the great transformation. But power plants with nuclear fusion reactors could also still play an important role after recent successes. How seriously can we take nuclear fusion with regard to energy and climate problems?

What is nuclear fusion?
The process of nuclear fusion is a physical process on which the energy of the sun is based. Nuclear fusion has been researched for decades because it offers an almost unlimited source of clean and CO2-neutral energy. Since the fusion process can be interrupted at any time, unlike nuclear fission, it is also considered particularly safe.

In conventional nuclear power plants, mainly radiation energy and germany consumer email list thermal energy in the form of heat are generated by splitting heavy atoms such as uranium. In nuclear fusion, however, the two types of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium, are fused using a plasma beam. When these two substances fuse, a helium nucleus is created, as well as a large amount of usable thermal energy in the form of heat. This thermal energy is to be used in power plants to drive steam turbines and electricity generators.

What potential does nuclear fusion offer?
One of the most important advantages of nuclear fusion is that it can be a virtually unlimited source of energy. Unlike fossil fuels, which are finite, nuclear fusion can be powered by hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium.

Deuterium is found in abundance in nature (for example in sea water). Tritium must be "bred" from the metal lithium by neutron irradiation. Lithium reserves are limited, but are sufficient for large-scale use in nuclear fusion. Just one gram of deuterium-tritium mixture can generate 90,000 kilowatt hours of energy in a power plant, which is equivalent to the heat of combustion of eleven tons of coal. For comparison: the energy released when one gram of uranium is split is equivalent to the combustion of 2.5 tons of coal.