Is thermonuclear energy necessary?

At this stage in the development of civilization, we can safely say that humanity is facing an "energy challenge". It is due to several fundamental factors at once:

Humanity now consumes a huge amount of energy.

The world's current energy consumption is about 15.7 terawatts (TW). Dividing this value by the population of the planet, we get about 2400 watts per person, which can be easily estimated and imagined. The energy consumed by every inhabitant of the Earth (including children) corresponds to the round-the-clock operation of 24 100-watt electric lamps.

— Global energy consumption is growing rapidly.

According to the forecast of the International Energy Agency (2006), world energy consumption should increase by 50% by 2030.

— Currently, 80% of the energy consumed by the world is created by burning fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas).), the use of which potentially carries the risk of catastrophic environmental changes.

Residents Saudi Arabia the following joke is popular: “My father rode a camel. I got a car, and my son is already flying a plane. But now his son will again ride a camel.”

This seems to be the case, since by all serious forecasts the world's oil reserves will run out mostly in about 50 years.

Even based on estimates by the US Geological Survey (this forecast is much more optimistic than the others), the growth of world oil production will continue for no more than the next 20 years (other experts predict that the peak of production will be reached in 5-10 years), after which the volume of oil produced will begin decrease at a rate of about 3% per year. Mining prospects natural gas they don't look much better. It is usually said that we will have enough hard coal for another 200 years, but this forecast is based on maintaining the current level of production and consumption. Meanwhile, coal consumption is now increasing by 4.5% per year, which immediately reduces the mentioned period of 200 years to only 50 years.

Thus, already now we should prepare for the end of the era of the use of fossil fuels.

Unfortunately, the current alternative sources energy is not able to cover the growing needs of mankind. According to the most optimistic estimates, maximum amount of energy (in the specified heat equivalent) generated by the listed sources is only 3 TW (wind), 1 TW (hydro), 1 TW (biological sources) and 100 GW (geothermal and offshore installations). The total amount of additional energy (even in this most optimal forecast) is only about 6 TW. At the same time, it should be noted that the development of new energy sources is a very complex technical task, so the cost of the energy they produce will in any case be higher than with the usual combustion of coal, etc. It seems quite obvious that

mankind must look for some other sources of energy, which at present can really be considered only the Sun and the reactions of thermal nuclear fusion.

Potentially, the Sun is an almost inexhaustible source of energy. The amount of energy that falls on just 0.1% of the planet's surface is equivalent to 3.8 TW (even if it is converted with an efficiency of only 15%). The problem lies in our inability to capture and transform this energy, which is associated both with the high cost solar panels, and with the problems of accumulation, storage and further transmission of the energy received to the required regions.

At present, nuclear power plants receive on a large scale the energy released during the fission reactions of atomic nuclei. I believe that the creation and development of such stations should be encouraged in every possible way, however, it must be taken into account that the reserves of one of the most important material for their operation (cheap uranium) can also be completely used up over the next 50 years.

Another important area of ​​development is the use of nuclear fusion (nucleus fusion), which now acts as the main hope for salvation, although the time of the creation of the first thermonuclear power plants is still uncertain. This lecture is devoted to this topic.

What is nuclear fusion?

Nuclear fusion, which is the basis for the existence of the Sun and stars, is potentially an inexhaustible source of energy for the development of the Universe in general. Experiments conducted in Russia (Russia is the birthplace of the Tokamak fusion facility), the United States, Japan, Germany, as well as in the UK as part of the Joint European Torus (JET) program, which is one of the leading research programs in the world, show that nuclear fusion can provide not only the current energy needs of mankind (16 TW), but also much large quantity energy.

The energy of nuclear fusion is very real, and the main question is whether we can create sufficiently reliable and cost-effective thermonuclear facilities.

Nuclear fusion processes are called fusion reactions of light atomic nuclei into heavier ones with the release of a certain amount of energy.

First of all, among them should be noted the reaction between two isotopes (deuterium and tritium) of hydrogen, which is very common on Earth, as a result of which helium is formed and a neutron is released. The reaction can be written in the following form:

D + T = 4 He + n + energy (17.6 MeV).

The released energy, arising from the fact that helium-4 has very strong nuclear bonds, is converted into ordinary kinetic energy, distributed between the neutron and the helium-4 nucleus in the proportion of 14.1 MeV / 3.5 MeV.

To initiate (ignite) the fusion reaction, it is necessary to completely ionize and heat the gas from a mixture of deuterium and tritium to a temperature above 100 million degrees Celsius (we will denote it as M degrees), which is about five times higher than the temperature at the center of the Sun. Already at a temperature of several thousand degrees, interatomic collisions lead to the knocking out of electrons from atoms, as a result of which a mixture of separated nuclei and electrons is formed, known as plasma, in which positively charged and high-energy deuterons and tritons (that is, the nuclei of deuterium and tritium) experience a strong mutual repulsion. However, the high temperature of the plasma (and the associated high energy of the ions) allows these deuterium and tritium ions to overcome the Coulomb repulsion and collide with each other. At temperatures above 100 M degrees, the most “energetic” deuterons and tritons approach each other in collisions at such close distances that powerful nuclear forces begin to act between them, forcing them to merge with each other into a single whole.

The implementation of this process in the laboratory is associated with three very difficult problems. First of all, the gas mixture of nuclei D and T should be heated to temperatures above 100 M degrees, somehow preventing its cooling and contamination (due to reactions with the walls of the vessel).

To solve this problem, "magnetic traps" were invented, called Tokamak, which prevent the plasma from interacting with the walls of the reactor.

In the described method, the plasma is heated by an electric current flowing inside the torus, up to about 3 M degrees, which, however, is still insufficient to initiate the reaction. For additional heating of the plasma, energy is either "pumped" into it by radio frequency radiation (as in a microwave oven), or beams of high-energy neutral particles are injected, which transfer their energy to the plasma during collisions. In addition, the release of heat occurs due to, in fact, thermonuclear reactions (as will be described below), as a result of which large installation plasma must be ignited.

The construction of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), which will be the first tokamak capable of “igniting” plasma, is currently underway in France.

The most advanced existing Tokamak-type facilities have long reached temperatures of the order of 150 M degrees, close to the values ​​required for the operation of a fusion plant, but the ITER reactor should be the first large-scale power plant designed for long-term operation. In the future, it will be necessary to significantly improve the parameters of its operation, which will require, first of all, an increase in the pressure in the plasma, since the rate of nuclear fusion at a given temperature is proportional to the square of the pressure.

The main scientific problem in this case is related to the fact that when the pressure in the plasma increases, very complex and dangerous instabilities arise, that is, unstable modes of operation.

The electrically charged helium nuclei arising from the fusion reaction are kept inside a "magnetic trap", where they are gradually slowed down due to collisions with other particles, and the energy released during collisions helps maintain the high temperature of the plasma column. Neutral (not having electric charge) neutrons leave the system and transfer their energy to the walls of the reactor, and the heat taken from the walls is the source of energy for the operation of turbines that generate electricity. The problems and difficulties of operating such a facility are primarily related to the fact that a powerful flux of high-energy neutrons and the released energy (in the form of electromagnetic radiation and plasma particles) seriously affect the reactor and can destroy the materials from which it was created.

Because of this, the design of thermonuclear installations is very complex. Physicists and engineers are faced with the task of ensuring the high reliability of their work. The design and construction of thermonuclear stations require them to solve a number of diverse and very complex technological problems.

The device of a thermonuclear power plant

The figure shows a schematic diagram (not to scale) of the device and the principle of operation of a thermonuclear power plant. In the central part there is a toroidal (donut-shaped) chamber with a volume of ~ 2000 m 3 filled with tritium-deuterium (T-D) plasma heated to a temperature above 100 M degrees. The neutrons produced during the fusion reaction leave the "magnetic trap" and fall into the shell shown in the figure with a thickness of about 1 m. 1

Inside the shell, neutrons collide with lithium atoms, resulting in a reaction with the formation of tritium:

neutron + lithium = helium + tritium.

In addition, competing reactions occur in the system (without the formation of tritium), as well as many reactions with the release of additional neutrons, which then also lead to the formation of tritium (in this case, the release of additional neutrons can be significantly enhanced, for example, by introducing atoms into the shell beryllium and lead). The general conclusion is that this facility could (at least theoretically) be a nuclear fusion reaction that would produce tritium. In this case, the amount of tritium formed should not only meet the needs of the installation itself, but even be somewhat larger, which will make it possible to provide new installations with tritium.

It is this operating concept that must be tested and implemented in the ITER reactor described below.

Neutrons should heat up the shell in the so-called pilot plants (which will use relatively "ordinary" structural materials) to about 400 degrees. In the future, it is planned to create improved installations with a shell heating temperature above 1000 degrees, which can be achieved through the use of the latest high-strength materials (such as silicon carbide composites). The heat released in the shell, as in conventional stations, is taken by the primary cooling circuit with a coolant (containing, for example, water or helium) and transferred to the secondary circuit, where water vapor is produced and supplied to the turbines.

The main advantage of nuclear fusion is that it requires only a very small amount of naturally occurring substances as fuel.

The nuclear fusion reaction in the described installations can lead to the release of huge amounts of energy, ten million times higher than the standard heat release in conventional chemical reactions(such as burning fossil fuels). For comparison, we point out that the amount of coal required to ensure the operation of a thermal power plant with a capacity of 1 gigawatt (GW) is 10,000 tons per day (ten railway cars), and a fusion plant of the same capacity will consume only about 1 kg of D + mixture per day T.

Deuterium is a stable isotope of hydrogen; in about one out of every 3350 molecules of ordinary water, one of the hydrogen atoms is replaced by deuterium (a legacy inherited from the Big Bang of the Universe). This fact makes it easy to organize a fairly cheap production of the required amount of deuterium from water. It is more difficult to obtain tritium, which is unstable (half-life is about 12 years, as a result of which its content in nature is negligible), however, as shown above, tritium will be produced right inside the thermonuclear installation during operation due to the reaction of neutrons with lithium.

Thus, the initial fuel for a thermonuclear reactor is lithium and water.

Lithium is ordinary metal, widely used in household appliances(in batteries for mobile phones, for example). The plant described above, even with imperfect efficiency, will be able to produce 200,000 kWh of electrical energy, which is equivalent to the energy contained in 70 tons of coal. The required amount of lithium is contained in one computer battery, and the amount of deuterium is contained in 45 liters of water. The above value corresponds to the current consumption of electricity (in terms of one person) in the EU countries for 30 years. The very fact that such an insignificant amount of lithium can provide the generation of such an amount of electricity (without CO 2 emissions and without the slightest pollution of the atmosphere) is a sufficiently strong argument for the rapid and vigorous development of research on the development of fusion energy (despite all the difficulties and problems) even with long-term perspective of creating a cost-effective thermonuclear reactor.

Deuterium should be sufficient for millions of years, and the easily mined lithium reserves are quite sufficient to meet the needs for hundreds of years.

Even if we run out of lithium in rocks, we can extract it from the water, where it is found in a high enough concentration (100 times that of uranium) to make it economically viable to mine.

Thermonuclear energy not only promises humanity, in principle, the possibility of producing a huge amount of energy in the future (without CO 2 emissions and without atmospheric pollution), but also has a number of other advantages.

1 ) High internal security.

The plasma used in thermonuclear installations has a very low density(about a million times lower than the density of the atmosphere), as a result of which the working environment of installations will never contain energy sufficient to cause serious incidents or accidents.

In addition, the loading of "fuel" must be carried out continuously, which makes it easy to stop its work, not to mention the fact that in the event of an accident and a sharp change in environmental conditions, the thermonuclear "flame" should simply go out.

What are the dangers associated with fusion energy? First, it is worth noting that although the fusion products (helium and neutrons) are not radioactive, the reactor shell can become radioactive during long-term exposure to neutrons.

Secondly, tritium is radioactive and has a relatively short half-life (12 years). But although the volume of plasma used is significant, due to its low density, it contains only a very small amount of tritium (a total weight of about ten postage stamps). That's why

even in the most difficult situations and accidents (complete destruction of the shell and the release of all the tritium contained in it, for example, during an earthquake and an aircraft crash into a station) in environment only a small amount of fuel will arrive, which will not require the evacuation of the population from nearby settlements.

2 ) The cost of energy.

It is expected that the so-called "internal" price of the received electricity (the cost of production itself) will become acceptable if it is 75% of the price already existing in the market. "Acceptability" in this case means that the price will be lower than the price of energy produced using old hydrocarbon fuels. "External" price ( side effects, impact on public health, climate, ecology, etc.) will be essentially zero.

International Pilot fusion reactor ITER

The main next step is to build an ITER reactor designed to demonstrate the very possibility of plasma ignition and, on this basis, obtain at least a tenfold gain in energy (in relation to the energy spent on plasma heating). The ITER reactor will be an experimental device that will not even be equipped with turbines for generating electricity and devices for using it. The purpose of its creation is to study the conditions that must be met during the operation of such power plants, as well as the creation on this basis of real, cost-effective power plants, which, apparently, should exceed ITER in size. The creation of real prototypes of fusion power plants (that is, plants fully equipped with turbines, etc.) requires solving the following two problems. First, it is necessary to continue developing new materials (capable of withstanding the very harsh operating conditions in the conditions described) and to test them in accordance with the special rules for the equipment of the IFMIF (International Fusion Irradiation Facility) system, described below. Secondly, it is necessary to solve many purely technical problems and develop new technologies related to remote control, heating, shell design, fuel cycles, etc. 2

The figure shows the ITER reactor, which surpasses the largest JET facility today, not only in all linear dimensions (approximately twice), but also in the magnitude of the magnetic fields used in it and the currents flowing through the plasma.

The purpose of creating this reactor is to demonstrate the capabilities of the combined efforts of physicists and engineers in the design of a large-scale thermonuclear power plant.

The capacity of the installation planned by the designers is 500 MW (with the energy consumption at the system input of only about 50 MW). 3

The ITER plant is being built by a consortium that includes the EU, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the US. The total population of these countries is about half of the total population of the Earth, so the project can be called a global response to a global challenge. The main components and assemblies of the ITER reactor have already been created and tested, and construction has already begun in the town of Cadarache (France). The launch of the reactor is scheduled for 2020, and the production of deuterium-tritium plasma - for 2027, since the commissioning of the reactor requires long and serious tests for plasma from deuterium and tritium.

The magnetic coils of the ITER reactor are based on superconducting materials (which, in principle, allow continuous operation, provided that the current in the plasma is maintained), so the designers hope to provide a guaranteed duty cycle of at least 10 minutes. It is clear that the presence of superconducting magnetic coils is fundamentally important for the continuous operation of a real thermonuclear power plant. Superconducting coils have already been used in devices such as Tokamak, but they have not previously been used in such large-scale installations designed for tritium plasma. In addition, the ITER facility will for the first time use and test various shell modules designed to work in real stations, where tritium nuclei can be generated or “recovered”.

The main purpose of building the facility is to demonstrate the successful control of plasma combustion and the possibility of actually obtaining energy in thermonuclear devices at the current level of technology development.

Further development in this direction, of course, will require many efforts to improve the efficiency of devices, especially from the point of view of their economic feasibility, which is associated with serious and lengthy studies, both on the ITER reactor and on other devices. Among the tasks set, the following three should be highlighted:

1) It is necessary to show that the existing level of science and technology already allows obtaining a 10-fold gain in energy (compared to that spent to maintain the process) in a controlled nuclear fusion process. The reaction must proceed without the occurrence of dangerous unstable modes, without overheating and damage to the materials of construction, and without contamination of the plasma by impurities. With fusion power on the order of 50% of the plasma heating power, these goals have already been achieved in experiments on small facilities, but the creation of the ITER reactor will make it possible to test the reliability of control methods on a much larger facility that produces much more energy for a long time. The ITER reactor is designed to test and harmonize the requirements for a future fusion reactor, and its creation is a very complex and interesting task.

2) It is necessary to study methods for increasing the pressure in the plasma (recall that the reaction rate at a given temperature is proportional to the square of the pressure) to prevent the occurrence of dangerous unstable regimes of plasma behavior. The success of research in this direction will either ensure the operation of the reactor at a higher plasma density, or reduce the requirements for the strength of the generated magnetic fields, which will significantly reduce the cost of electricity produced by the reactor.

3) Tests should confirm that the continuous operation of the reactor in a stable mode can be realistically ensured (from an economic and technical point of view, this requirement seems to be very important, if not the main one), and the launch of the plant can be carried out without huge energy costs. Researchers and designers are very hopeful that the "continuous" flow of electromagnetic current through the plasma can be provided by its generation in the plasma (due to high-frequency radiation and injection of fast atoms).

The modern world is facing a very serious energy challenge, which can more accurately be called an "uncertain energy crisis".

At present, almost all the energy consumed by mankind is created by burning fossil fuels, and the solution to the problem may be associated with the use of solar energy or nuclear energy (creation of fast neutron reactors, etc.). The global problem caused by the growing population of developing countries and their need to improve living standards and increase the amount of energy produced cannot be solved only on the basis of the approaches considered, although, of course, any attempts to develop alternative methods of energy generation should be encouraged.

If there are no major and unexpected surprises in the way of the development of thermonuclear energy, then, subject to the developed reasonable and orderly program of actions, which (of course, subject to good organization of work and sufficient funding) should lead to the creation of a prototype thermonuclear power plant. In this case, in about 30 years, we will be able to supply electric current from it to the energy networks for the first time, and in a little more than 10 years, the first commercial thermonuclear power plant will begin to operate. It is possible that in the second half of our century, nuclear fusion energy will begin to replace fossil fuels and gradually begin to play an increasingly important role in providing humanity with energy on a global scale.

“Lockheed Martin has begun development of a compact fusion reactor… The company's website says that the first prototype will be built in a year. If this turns out to be true, in a year we will live in a completely different world,” this is the beginning of one of the “Attic”. Three years have passed since its publication, and the world has not changed much since then.

Today in reactors nuclear power plants energy is generated by the decay of heavy nuclei. In thermonuclear reactors, energy is obtained during the process of fusion of nuclei, in which nuclei of a smaller mass are formed than the sum of the original ones, and the “residue” goes away in the form of energy. Waste nuclear reactors radioactive, their safe disposal is a big headache. Fusion reactors do not have this drawback, and also use widely available fuels such as hydrogen.

They have only one big problem - industrial designs do not yet exist. The task is not easy: for thermonuclear reactions it is necessary to compress the fuel and heat it up to hundreds of millions of degrees - hotter than on the surface of the Sun (where thermonuclear reactions occur naturally). It is difficult to achieve such a high temperature, but it is possible, only such a reactor consumes more energy than it produces.

However, they still have so many potential advantages that, of course, not only Lockheed Martin is involved in the development.

ITER

ITER is the largest project in this area. The European Union, India, China, Korea, Russia, the USA and Japan are participating in it, and the reactor itself has been built in France since 2007, although its history goes much deeper into the past: Reagan and Gorbachev agreed on its creation in 1985. The reactor is a toroidal chamber, a “donut”, in which the plasma is held by magnetic fields, which is why it is called a tokamak - then rhoidal ka measure with ma rotten to atushkas. The reactor will generate energy by fusion of hydrogen isotopes - deuterium and tritium.

It is planned that ITER will receive 10 times more energy than it consumes, but this will not happen soon. Initially, it was planned that the reactor would start operating in experimental mode in 2020, but then this period was postponed to 2025. Wherein industrial production energy will not begin until 2060, and it is possible to wait for the spread of this technology only somewhere at the end of the 21st century.

Wendelstein 7-X

Wendelstein 7-X is the world's largest stellarator fusion reactor. The stellarator solves the problem that haunts tokamaks - the "spreading" of plasma from the center of the torus to its walls. What the tokamak tries to cope with due to the power of the magnetic field, the stellarator solves due to its complex shape: The plasma-holding magnetic field bends to stop the encroachment of charged particles.

Wendelstein 7-X, as its creators hope, will be able to work for half an hour in the 21st year, which will give a “ticket to life” for the idea of ​​​​thermonuclear stations of a similar design.

National Ignition Facility

Another type of reactor uses powerful lasers to compress and heat the fuel. Alas, the largest laser installation for obtaining thermonuclear energy, the American NIF, could not produce more energy than it consumes.

Which of all these projects will really “take off”, and which will suffer the fate of NIF, is difficult to predict. It remains to wait, hope and follow the news: the 2020s promise to be an interesting time for nuclear energy.

"Nuclear technologies" - one of the profiles of the NTI Olympiad for schoolchildren.

The project of the international experimental thermonuclear reactor ITER started in 2007. It is located in Cadarache, in the south of France. The main task of ITER is, according to those who conceived and implemented the project, to show the possibilities of commercial use thermonuclear fusion.

ITER is a strategic international scientific initiative, more than 30 countries participate in its implementation.

“We are in the very heart of the future fusion reactor. Its weight is three eiffel towers, and the total area will be 60 football fields,” says euronews journalist Claudio Rocco.

A thermonuclear reactor or a toroidal installation for magnetic confinement of plasma, otherwise called a tokomak, is created in order to achieve the conditions necessary for controlled thermonuclear fusion to occur. The plasma in the tokamak is held not by the walls of the chamber, but by a specially created combined magnetic field- toroidal external and poloidal current field flowing through the plasma column. Compared to other installations that use a magnetic field to confine the plasma, the use of electric current is main feature tokamak

In the implementation of controlled thermonuclear fusion, deuterium and tritium will be used in the tokamak.
Details can be found in an interview with ITER Director General Bernard Bigot.

What is the advantage of energy produced by controlled fusion?

“First of all, in the use of hydrogen isotopes, which, in turn, is considered an almost inexhaustible source: hydrogen is found everywhere, including in the oceans. So as long as there is water on Earth, sea and fresh, we will be provided with fuel for the tokamak - we are talking about millions of years. The second advantage is that radioactive waste has a rather short half-life: several hundred years, compared to nuclear fusion waste products.”

Fusion is controlled and, according to Bernard Bigot, it is relatively easy to interrupt if an accident occurs. A different situation in a similar case develops with nuclear fusion.

By heating a substance, a nuclear reaction can be achieved. It is this interrelation between the heating of a substance and a nuclear reaction that the term "thermonuclear reaction" reflects.

The design of the tokamak components is carried out by the efforts of the ITER member countries, and the details and technological units of the tokamak are produced in Japan, South Korea, Russia, China, the USA and other countries. When building a tokamak, the probability of various types of accidents is taken into account.

Bernard Bigot: “Nevertheless, radioactive elements can leak. Some compartment will not be airtight enough. But their number will be minimal, and for those who live near the reactor, there will be no great danger either to health or to life.”

But the possibility of an accident and leakage is provided for in the project, in particular, the rooms in which thermonuclear fusion takes place and the halls adjacent to them will be equipped with special ventilation shafts into which radioactive elements will be sucked in order to prevent their release to the outside.

“I don't think that the estimate of about 16 billion euros looks so gigantic, especially if you take into account the cost of the energy that will be produced here. Moreover, it takes a long time to produce, a very long time, so all the costs will justify themselves even in the medium term,” concludes Bernard Bigot.

The Russian NIIEFA recently announced the successful testing of a full-scale prototype of a quenching resistor for the protection system for superconducting coils, which were designed specifically for ITER.

And the commissioning of the entire ITER complex in French Cadarache is planned for 2020.

For more than half a century, hard work has been going on in different countries. Scientists are trying to find the key to another, the most grandiose energy pantry. They want to extract energy from water. For many, a thermonuclear power plant is rightly seen as the only way to free humanity from the hydrocarbon trap.

The higher the temperature of a substance, the faster its particles move. But even in a plasma, two free atomic nuclei collide with each other without any consequences. The forces of mutual repulsion are too great for atomic nuclei. But if the plasma temperature is raised to hundreds of millions of degrees, the energy of fast particles can become higher than the "repulsion barrier". Then, from two light atomic nuclei, a collision will produce one, heavier nucleus.

And the birth of a new substance will occur with a powerful release of energy

Hydrogen, as the lightest element on Earth, is especially suitable for participation in thermonuclear reactions. More precisely, not the hydrogen that, together with oxygen, makes up ordinary water, but its heavy counterpart deuterium, whose atomic weight is twice as large. It can be extracted from heavy water, which it forms by combining with oxygen. For six thousand drops of ordinary water, there is one drop of heavy water in nature. At first it seems that this is very little, but calculations show that only the oceans of our planet contain about 38,000 billion tons of heavy water.

If we learn how to effectively extract the energy hidden in it, humanity will be provided with such a reserve for billions of years thanks to thermonuclear power plants.

Thermonuclear reactions (the so-called compounds of light atomic nuclei with the formation of heavier nuclei and with the release of energy) have already been carried out artificially on Earth. But so far these have been instantaneous, uncontrollable, destructive reactions - explosions of hydrogen (or rather, deuterium) bombs like Kuz'kina's mother. And if things are fine with thermonuclear weapons, then everything is not so simple with a peaceful reactor.

Physicists from many countries are conducting international research aimed at creating an industrial thermonuclear reactor and building a power plant based on it. Such a reactor will make it possible to master truly inexhaustible reserves of energy and will bring humanity to a fundamentally new level of existence. Today, the existing reactors (tokamaks) operate for a short time. Over the entire period of research, about 300 thermonuclear reactors were built. It was only in 2007 that a break-even energy reaction was made for the first time, when the tokamak produced a quarter (1:1.25) more than the consumed energy.

In the near future it is planned to bring this ratio up to 1:50. In this regard, tokamaks can only be considered as experimental, but not as industrial installations. Of all technical tasks modern science, the issue of industrial thermonuclear fusion can, without exaggeration, be called the most ambitious undertaking that can turn ideas about production, ecology, construction, agriculture and transport.

Thermonuclear fusion is capable of radically reshaping both the political and economic map of the world. If any country can have at its disposal a limitless source of clean energy, deserts will soon bloom, and gasoline and gas will have to be abandoned. Energy-intensive processes such as metal smelting or aluminum production can be carried out anywhere. The extraction and development of previously unprofitable deposits of metals and substances will become possible.

New fast fantastic modes of transport will appear

Truly, not a single invention has changed and will not change our world like a thermonuclear reactor, our little earthly sun. It is clear that the brake on the development of industrial thermonuclear fusion is not only science itself. Basic Research carried out, and it cannot be said that they are unsuccessful. However, the issue of putting a working unit into a series runs into a powerful lobby of raw materials and processing corporations. It should be taken into account that the budgets of many oil-producing consortiums exceed the budgets of many countries. And these monsters are not going to lose their astronomical income and power.

Therefore, no matter how sad it may sound, we will see an operating thermonuclear reactor, and even more so, a power plant, either by the exhaustion of oil and gas, or by the exhaustion of the capitalist model of society. Moreover, even after the end of oil and gas, the energy lobby is unlikely to allow everyone to get access to unlimited energy. And if so, then the sad conclusion suggests itself - a thermonuclear power plant cannot be built and put into series by the capitalists. It can only be realized in a socialist society. For corporatocrats, such a reactor is deadly and work on it will never be completed.

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lasers,

We say that we will put the sun into a box. The idea is pretty. The problem is we don't know how to make the box.

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes
French Nobel Laureate

Everyone electronic devices and machines need energy and humanity consumes a lot of it. But fossil fuels are running out, and alternative energy is still not efficient enough.
There is a way to obtain energy, ideally suited to all requirements - Fusion. The fusion reaction (the conversion of hydrogen into helium and the release of energy) constantly takes place in the sun and this process gives the planet energy in the form sun rays. You just need to simulate it on Earth, on a smaller scale. Enough to provide high pressure and a very high temperature (10 times higher than on the Sun) and the fusion reaction will be launched. To create such conditions, it is necessary to build a thermonuclear reactor. It will use more abundant resources on earth, be safer and more powerful than conventional nuclear power plants. For more than 40 years, attempts have been made to build it and experiments have been carried out. AT last years one of the prototypes even managed to get more energy than was spent. The most ambitious projects in this area are presented below:

State projects

Recently, the greatest public attention has been given to another design of a thermonuclear reactor - the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator (the stellarator is more complicated in terms of internal device than ITER, which is a tokamak). Having spent just over 1 billion dollars, German scientists built a reduced, demonstration model of the reactor in 9 years by 2015. If it performs well, a larger version will be built.

The MegaJoule Laser in France will be the most powerful laser in the world and will try to advance a method of building a fusion reactor based on the use of lasers. The commissioning of the French installation is expected in 2018.

NIF (National ignition facility) was built in the USA in 12 years and 4 billion dollars by 2012. They expected to test the technology and then immediately build a reactor, but it turned out that, according to Wikipedia, considerable work is required if the system is ever to reach ignition. As a result, grandiose plans were canceled and scientists began to gradually improve the laser. The final challenge is to raise the energy transfer efficiency from 7% to 15%. Otherwise, congressional funding for this method of achieving synthesis may cease.

At the end of 2015, the construction of a building for the world's most powerful laser facility began in Sarov. It will be more powerful than the current American and future French and will allow to carry out the experiments necessary for the construction of the "laser" version of the reactor. Completion of construction in 2020.

The US-based laser - MagLIF fusion is recognized as a dark horse among the methods of achieving thermonuclear fusion. Recently, this method has performed better than expected, but the power still needs to be increased by a factor of 1000. Now the laser is being upgraded, and by 2018, scientists hope to get as much energy as they spent. If successful, a larger version will be built.

In the Russian INP, experiments were persistently carried out on the “open traps” method, which the United States abandoned in the 90s. As a result, indicators were obtained that were considered impossible for this method. INP scientists believe that their installation is now at the level of the German Wendelstein 7-X (Q=0.1), but cheaper. Now they are building a new installation for 3 billion rubles

The head of the Kurchatov Institute constantly reminds of plans to build a small thermonuclear reactor in Russia - Ignitor. According to the plan, it should be as effective as ITER, albeit less. Its construction should have started 3 years ago, but this situation is typical for large scientific projects.

The Chinese EAST tokamak at the beginning of 2016 managed to get a temperature of 50 million degrees and hold it for 102 seconds. Prior to the construction of huge reactors and lasers, all the news about fusion was like this. One might think that this is just a competition among scientists - who can keep the ever-higher temperature for longer. The higher the plasma temperature and the longer it is possible to keep it, the closer we are to the beginning of the fusion reaction. There are dozens of such installations in the world, several more () () are being built so that the EAST record will soon be broken. In essence, these small reactors are just testing equipment before sending it to ITER.

Lockheed Martin announced in 2015 a breakthrough in fusion power that would allow them to build a small and mobile fusion reactor in 10 years. Considering that even very large and not at all mobile commercial reactors were expected no earlier than 2040, the corporation's statement was met with skepticism. But the company has a lot of resources, so who knows. A prototype is expected in 2020.

Popular Silicon Valley startup Helion Energy has its own unique plan to achieve nuclear fusion. The company has raised over $10 million and expects to have a prototype by 2019.

Shadowy start-up Tri Alpha Energy has recently achieved impressive results in advancing its fusion method (over 100 theoretical ways to achieve fusion have been developed by theorists, the tokamak is simply the simplest and most popular). The company has also raised over $100 million in investor funds.

The reactor project from the Canadian startup General Fusion is even more unlike the others, but the developers are confident in it and have raised more than $100 million in 10 years to build the reactor by 2020.

Startup from the United Kingdom - First light has the most accessible site, formed in 2014, and announced plans to use the latest scientific data for less costly obtaining thermonuclear fusion.

Scientists from MIT wrote an article describing a compact fusion reactor. They rely on new technologies that appeared after the start of construction of giant tokamaks and promise to complete the project in 10 years. It is not yet known whether they will be given green light at the start of construction. Even if approved, a magazine article is an even earlier stage than a startup.

Fusion is perhaps the least suitable industry for crowdfunding. But it is with his help, and also with funding from NASA, that Lawrenceville Plasma Physics is going to build a prototype of its reactor. Of all the ongoing projects, this one is the most similar to fraud, but who knows, maybe they will bring something useful to this grandiose work.

ITER will only be a prototype for the construction of a full-fledged DEMO facility - the first commercial fusion reactor. Its launch is now scheduled for 2044 and this is still an optimistic forecast.

But there are plans for the next stage. A hybrid thermonuclear reactor will receive energy both from the decay of an atom (like a conventional nuclear power plant) and from fusion. In this configuration, the energy can be 10 times more, but the safety is lower. China expects to build a prototype by 2030, but experts say it's like trying to assemble hybrid cars before the invention of the internal combustion engine.

Outcome

There is no shortage of people willing to bring a new source of energy into the world. The ITER project has the best chance, given its scale and funding, but other methods, as well as private projects, should not be discounted. Scientists have been working for decades to launch the fusion reaction without much success. But now projects to achieve thermonuclear reaction more than ever. Even if each of them fails, new attempts will be made. It is unlikely that we will rest until we light a miniature version of the Sun, here on Earth.

Tags:

• fusion reactor
• energy
• future projects

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