• Fusion power offers the prospect of an almost inexhaustible source of energy for future generations, but it also presents so far insurmountable engineering challenges.
• The fundamental challenge is to achieve a rate of heat emitted by a fusion plasma that exceeds the rate of energy injected into the plasma.
• The main hope is centred on tokamak reactors and stellarators which confine a deuterium-tritium plasma magnetically.

Today, many countries take part in fusion research to some extent, led by the European Union, the USA, Russia and Japan, with vigorous programs also underway in China, Brazil, Canada, and Korea. Initially, fusion research in the USA and USSR was linked to atomic weapons development, and it remained classified until the 1958 Atoms for Peace conference in Geneva. Following a breakthrough at the Soviet tokamak, fusion research became ‘big science’ in the 1970s. But the cost and complexity of the devices involved increased to the point where international co-operation was the only way forward. Tiếp tục đọc “Nuclear Fusion Power” →