[ad_1]
The expected breakthrough may have arrived. US scientists may have found a way to produce energy from nuclear fusion, a goal that has been pursued for decades. For certainty awaits the Press conference that the US Department of Energy has set for tomorrow, Tuesday 13 December. But it should only serve to make public the details of the goal achieved, judging by the rumors coming from Financial Times and from Washington Postwarheads whose authority we certainly don’t discover.
The details about how a historic turning point would have been reached which the two take for granted, however, are not a trivial matter. In fact, the production of clean energy from nuclear fusion has been talked about for some time, and it has been known for some time that from the fusion of two atoms a lot of energy is obtained, as the Sun teaches very well, but artificially man has never managed to produce more than what is necessary to trigger the reaction. The only certain element that comes out of the rumors, with the WP extension who would have spoken to researchers who remained anonymous, is that the turning point would have taken place in the National Ignition Facility of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in California.
Nuclear fusion is the process that arises from fusion of two hydrogen atoms and which, to be clear, allows the Sun to shine. For dozens of years, scientists from all over the world have been looking at fusion as a tool to get out of the loop we’ve gotten ourselves into, that of the production of insufficient energy for the Earth’s consumption from renewable sources and polluting from fossil sources. And the huge advantage of fusion over nuclear fission is that it does not generate radioactive waste And does not require rare fuels (see uranium).
Fusion offers unrivaled potential for producing clean energy, promising a future of inexhaustible energy that could free us from fossil fuels and make us truly self-sufficient and secure, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, said a few months ago. the energy and industrial strategy of the United Kingdom on the occasion of the construction of the first plant.
Hydrogen is obtained from water with very energy-intensive electrolytic reactions. The point is that so far much more energy has been needed to start the fusion process than the amount released by the fusion itself. In other words the balance between energy supplied and obtained was negative, while now the California scientists would be able to reverse the outcome of the process. How they succeeded and how much And self it can immediately be a turning point to free ourselves from pollution and achieve climate goals we will find out tomorrow.
nuclear fusion: union of two nuclei into a heavier one
Both processes produce energy, but the first (which is what is commonly referred to with the expression nuclear energy) emits waste that is difficult to dispose of and requires a fuel such as uranium which, for example, is radioactive and not very abundant on the planet.
[ad_2]
Source link
