man has always worshiped the sun it's perfectly logical too as the warm ball of light and heat
sitting high in the sky fuels life on this planet by producing the equivalent of about
a trillion nuclear bombs per second enough to power human civilization for 500 000 years
every second so why has china decided to build their very own artificial sun
the need cleaner better more it's no secret the world stores of subterranean fossil fuel stores
are running out the industrial age has seen an explosion in the global human population
and those people all need food on the table lights on in the house and be able to get from
a to b burning coal pumps 50 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year
and in such a relatively short time in our existence we have effectively altered the climate
of our planet it's no small thing there is an increasingly urgent need for a cleaner alternative
to conventional fossil fuel-based energy generation wind solar geothermal hydro tidal
all excellent methods to harness power from nature but the yield just isn't there to replace current
infrastructure and support the needs of the human race the answer lies in the atom e equals m c
squared it's an equation known by many but understood by few basically energy equals
mass multiplied by the speed of light square in layman's terms there is an almost unfathomably
large amount of energy contained within matter just waiting to be extracted the history the good
the bad and the ugly picture a golden god in all their blazing glory dragging a fiery orb across
the heavens from dawn until dusk the sun rising and setting is a concept that amazed early man
and this description of a powerful solar deity tasked with ensuring the sun rises each new day
could easily be from many religions around the globe the greek helios the roman apollo the norse
soul the hindu surya first mankind wanted to split the atom we succeeded though arguably with mixed
results the tremendous amount of energy released can then either be harnessed or unleashed on one
hand nuclear power stations supply over two dozen countries with electricity by turning water into
steam powering turbines with a process that splits a heavy uranium atom into smaller atoms called
nuclear fission on the other hand the atomic boogeyman has haunted us on numerous occasions
out of those two dozen countries who use enriched uranium as the fuel for steam turbines nine have
developed nuclear weapons in fact russia and the usa account for 93 of the world's 15 000 strong
armaments too many then there are the catastrophes the meltdowns that put the fear of god in mankind
and make us question whether potentially rendering our planet too radioactive to inhabit is a worthy
risk for quote-unquote cleaner energy these range in severity from mild to world-changing
a cooling malfunction caused the molten core of the number two reactor at pennsylvania's
three mile island released radioactive gas during 1979 in such a small amount that it didn't affect
background radiation levels or harm nearby residents a warning but prices averted when
an earthquake hit the japanese fukushima plan in 2011 external power was cut off to
the cooling system designed to slow the nuclear reaction the water from the subsequent 50-foot
tsunami rendered the backup generators useless overheating the uranium fuel and causing hydrogen
explosions in three of the cores radioactive material leaked into the air ground and sea
with 100 000 people permanently displaced from their homes within the exclusion zone
then there is the big one the accident that still haunts us today 1986 chernobyl arrogant hubris
human error and an inherent design fault pushed the reactor to its absolute limits and well
past the threshold of failure the core exploded releasing 400 times more radioactive material
into the atmosphere than the hiroshima sending a toxic cloud of dust across europe for 10 full days
to date only 50 deaths are attributed to the worst nuclear disaster in human history
out of the million strong cleanup team it's estimated around 15 percent have succumbed to
terminal illness as a result of their exposure the death rate incidence of cancer and number of birth
defects in newborn children skyrocketed in the ukraine and russia and remains over 30 years later
millions of lives forever changed with the compromised core of chernobyl still eating through
the concrete base of the power plant making the area uninhabitable for at least the next 100 years
there has to be a better way than atomic fission a process that creates terrible products that
remain toxic for tens of thousands of years and radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years
the why isn't it obvious the logical way forward is nuclear fusion but first let's take a minute
to think about what energy is in its most basic form energy is storage and transfer let's use
fossil fuels as an example the storage part comes from the decomposed prehistoric plant and animal
matter stored underground as fossil fuels it's the same concept as the electrical potential
within a battery the transfer comes when those fossil fuels are burned to create electricity the
stored chemical energy in coal is changed to heat which turns water into steam to power turbines the
kinetic energy moving the fins is then converted back into electricity by the relationship between
magnetic and electric fields the electrons flow through power lines into your home where they are
again changed into light and heat as you cook on a stove top sit at your computer or turn on a light
bulb it's all energy just stored in different forms and transformed into what you needed to be
the downside is pollution greenhouse gases from fossil fuels and radioactive waste from
nuclear fission these two methods have the best output but are the worst for our environment
conversely renewable green energy is fantastic for the health of the planet
but the yields are too small to sustain us the sun is the key the original producer of all the energy
transferred via sunshine and then stored on earth by using neutron heavy isotopes of hydrogen such
as deuterium and tritium the same nuclear fusion reaction occurring in the sun on a grand scale can
be mimicked on a smaller skin the smaller atoms can be forced together to create harmless healing
generating a huge amount of energy in the form of heat during the process
the watts isn't it awesome it's only been very recently that china have successfully
powered up their fusion reactor affectionately known as the artificial sun for the first time
this is huge the hl2m takamak reactor is currently the world's largest and
most advanced device used for experimental nuclear fusion research that is crucial in
unlocking both a powerful and clean burning energy source for the future
playing god has become possible by way of a powerful magnetic field used to fuse and contain
the hot plasma while withstanding temperature of up to 270 million degrees fahrenheit
not only could they house a mini sun in this field but they could theoretically make a
sun with a core 10 times hotter than our own this plasma is an ionized gas that conducts electricity
normally the weak atomic force that prevents two atoms from combining into a larger atom
is just too strong for fusion to occur naturally the positively charged protons in each atomic
nucleus repel each other in a similar way that you can force the north poles of a magnet together
in order for the phenomenon to occur you need two things high temperature and high pressure in order
to get the hydrogen isotopes excited enough to overcome their electrical repulsion they need to
be heated to 170 million degrees fahrenheit where they enter this higher plasma state and lose their
electrons the sun achieves this due to its large mass and huge gravity compressing the core mass
here on earth we use microwaves lasers and ion particles to achieve the same temperatures
next up is pressure as previously stated the sun is huge and its gravitational force is
enough to squeeze the hydrogen together to form helium this is the tricky part as we need to use
extremely powerful magnetic fields to contain and condense the plasma to act as the catalyst
to initiate the fusion reaction the chinese plan to use this otherworldly device in collaboration
with the international thermonuclear experimental reactor currently being constructed in france
when it's completed in 2025 it will become the new king of nuclear fusion
the biggest and most powerful in the world
the future best of both worlds currently this reactor uses double neutron deuterium
to triple neutron tritium fusion reaction deuterium to deuterium fusion requires
much higher temperatures and is seen as the holy grail of nuclear fusion for a very simple reason
it's easy to make deuterium can be very easily extracted from seawater
while tritium can only be bred from lithium a notoriously finite resource
the end game is to produce renewable power from a controlled fusion reaction using nothing but
seawater the added benefit is that a pure deuterium fuel source increases energy yield
generally speaking one out of every 5 000 hydrogen atoms in seawater is deuterium theoretically one
gallon of seawater could produce as much energy as 300 gallons of gasoline it's the
best of both worlds high electricity production without the massive detriment to the environment