Explained: What is Fusion Energy That Can Meet Global Clean Power Needs?

France is ready to get the most powerful magnet in the world, which will kick off the ambitious ITER project, which aims to demonstrate how a fusion reactor works for commercial use. As countries struggle to fight global warming and switch to renewable energy sources to counter fossil fuel consumption, the fusion reactor could be the answer to growing global demand for clean electricity.

The fusion reactor works by the same process that powers the sun, and ITER’s mission is to prove that energy can be generated and controlled from hydrogen fusion on Earth. Engineers from around the world are working together to demonstrate a “sun on earth” fusion on an industrial scale.

What is fusion energy?

Amid rising carbon emissions in the atmosphere and countries struggling to control the rise in temperature by the end of the next decade to prevent catastrophic effects, fusion energy could be the next big thing. As a carbon-free, safe and economically viable form of energy, fusion is powered by hydrogen, which is available in abundance.

One of the greatest advantages of fusion energy is that it does not cause greenhouse gas emissions.

In a nuclear fusion reaction that propels the sun in its core, two light hydrogen nuclei fuse into a single, heavier nucleus. Part of the mass of the hydrogen is converted into energy. The process can be replicated on Earth by combining deuterium with tritium to create helium and a neutron. While deuterium is abundant in seawater, tritium can be produced by combining the fusion neutron with the abundant light metal lithium.

“Like a gas, coal or nuclear fission plant, a fusion device will deliver highly concentrated base load energy around the clock,” said General Atomics, which manufactures the central solenoid valve for the ITER project. One of the greatest advantages of fusion energy is that it does not produce greenhouse gas emissions or long-lived radioactive waste.

A look at the fusion energy experiment being developed in France. (Photo: ITER)

Development of a commercial fusion reactor

ITER is an international fusion energy experiment in which engineers and physicists will try to generate a self-sufficient fusion reaction over long periods of time. In France, scientists want to test the integrated technologies, materials and physics needed for the commercial production of fusion-based electricity. As part of the project, China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States have been working together for 35 years to build and operate the ITER experimental device.

To generate the enormous amount of energy, a small amount of deuterium and tritium (hydrogen) gas is injected into a large, donut-shaped vacuum chamber called a tokamak. The hydrogen is then heated until it becomes ionized plasma, which is confined by giant superconducting magnets like the central magnet. When the hydrogen plasma is heated to —150 million degrees Celsius – ten times hotter than the core of the sun – fusion energy is created.

Fusion can be replicated on Earth by combining deuterium with tritium to create helium and a neutron. (Photo: ITER)

India’s attempt to create fusion energy

India had successfully developed its own Aditya tokamak, which went into operation in 1989 and maintained a plasma temperature of 0.4 seconds. The tokamak was upgraded in 2016 and has been in the experimental phase since then.

Part of the ambitious ITER in France, India officially joined the project in 2006, contributing nine percent of the equipment, staff and resources to manufacture the massive tokamak. India is participating in the in-kind procurement of ITER components project and has supplied cryostat, in-wall shield, cooling water system, cryosystem, ion cyclotron RF heating system, electron cyclotron RF heating system and diagnostic neutral beam system, power supplies for the project.

The cryostat developed by India for the ITER project. (Photo: ITER India)

ITER-India is subordinate to the Institute for Plasma Research (IPR), a supported organization of the Department of Atomic Energy.

Several attempts at fusion energy

China recently set a new record by designing an “artificial sun” on earth that can withstand a temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius. The Experimental Advanced Supraconductor Tokamak (EAST) fusion reactor developed by China broke the record by reaching super-high temperatures for 101 seconds. The main goal of the experimental reactor is to create nuclear fusion like the sun by using deuterium from the ocean to provide a steady stream of clean energy.

China’s Experimental Advanced Supraconductor Tokamak (EAST) fusion reactor.

Previously, in November 2018, EAST had generated an electron temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius in its core plasma, which is seven times the temperature that prevails in the core of the sun. China is not alone when it comes to fusion experiments. The superconducting fusion device Tokamak Advanced Research from Korea reached a plasma temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius in 20 seconds in December 2020.

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