User:Khoi.dng/sandbox

Answers to Module 7 Questions

The photograph is about the wedding of a couple. It is the time when the bride greets her friends and family, keeping the bouquet tightly while her husband holding her hand. It is my own work, taken on film and scanned with JPG format. The work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. The photo belongs to People Category.

= Proto = PROTO (PROTOtype fusion reactor) is a prototype nuclear fusion reactor, aiming at supplying electricity for commercial needs, unlike its precedents – ITER and DEMO. It is the final stage of EU Commissions strategy to the realization of fusion energy. PROTO is planned to operate after 2050.

Due to its long-term projection, not many information about this is directly available.

Strategy & timeline
European Commission aims at sustaining power supplies for the increasing population by establishing power plants using nuclear fusion technology. By the current population growth rate, the world will reach 10 billion people by 2030 (Lee & Saw, 2011). To maintain that size of population with increasing living standard requires more energy. However, current global energy production is based mainly on fossil fuels, which are limited and leave further impacts on environment. Nuclear fusion can resolve this and provide a more sustainable and safe source of energy.

The plan toward building fusion reactor which meets the demand of commercial use requires many steps. An experimental reactor (ITER) is researched and implemented first, which prepares the energy for the construction of the demonstration plant (DEMO) later on. DEMO would contribute further into implementing PROTO.

2005-2035: Construction and operation of ITER

2010-2023: Designing DEMO

2024-2047: Construction and operation of DEMO

2030-2050: Designing and constructing PROTO

Impact
Blooming population requires huge amount of resources to fuel. These resources, from food, water, land, to education, housing, hospital, can be counted toward energy. To sustain the sizing up humanity, better energy production must be implemented.

For current method of producing energy, the process emits substances that pollute the environment. The fuel for energy production also is running out. The alternative for fossil fuels is nuclear fission. However for the forecasted population size, it would not be enough just using nuclear fission power plants (Lee & Saw, 2011). Also, the dump of fission plants are radiating for a very long time, whereas that of fusion plants are just for a short time. By that, the environmental cost can be reduced and less harm would be left onto the ecosystem.

ER
November 2006, negotiations on funding for the construction of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor has come to agreement among European Union and 6 of its partners (India, Japan, China, USA, Russia and South Korea). It is an international project focusing on implementing world largest thermonuclear power plant.

ITER is the first phase of EC’s nuclear fusion plan.

Fusion reaction
The reaction in which collides between small and light atoms result in heavier atoms. Most reactions would involve isotopes of hydrogen, which are deuterium and tritium.