User:Mike schoettler/sandbox

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We have always have always had Nuclear power since the 50’s where Russia had built the first one. We have progressed since then with there now being hundreds of reactors all over the world. Many countries still don’t have it and burn fossil fuels which have been polluting the Earth for centuries now. The old ways of Nuclear energy are not much better creating nuclear waste which the only way to dispose of it is burying it miles beneath the ground in old mine shafts. The new way of nuclear power is to use fusion instead of fission.

Fission requires the splitting of the atom to generate heat and a large cooling process to keep the reactor from over heating which would cause a melt down. This has happened before in Chernobyl, Russia and more recently Fukushima, Japan. Both of these lead to huge environmental disasters where hundreds were injured, some died, and long term damage to the area where people can no longer go for thousands of years. These disasters have caused people to shy away from nuclear energy but with how fossil fuels are ruining the atmosphere something has to change.

Fusion is the energy that powers the sun also what we used to create the most destructive bomb in known history the hydrogen bomb. This does hundreds of times more damage then the atom bombs the United States has used in the past. We have created nuclear fusion before but we now need to contain it because it creates almost no waste and it’s a limitless source of energy. It works by using magnets to contain the mass of ions and electrons that are separated by huge amounts of heat in excess of 270 million degrees Fahrenheit. They then fuse together giving off almost limitless energy without waste or damage to the atmosphere that fission does and fossil fuel also does in creating there energy.

Many countries are all working on this project to come up the most efficient way to the process. Governments are backing them completely as the United Kingdom has said they will have it available with in the next 11 years by 2030. They hope to have commercial reactors with enough energy to be completely off fossil fuels in the next decade after that. In the United States there is a reactor being built that they believe will be running by 2025 with enough power coming out to run a small city. France has also been working on a reactor solution to there countries power demands but no date was given as to when there reactor could be finished. Germany has set world records for plasma production making there reactor the closest to achieving the goal of a “star in a jar” so to speak. China has also more recently hit a milestone in creating temperatures about six times as hot as the Sun 180 million degrees Fahrenheit which is about the temperature scientist believe is required to keep the reactors making limitless energy.

Every year more countries are getting close to leaving behind old fossil fuels and moving on to more practical energy sources. Nuclear fusion is what will power our space ships and hopefully our vehicles in the future. A nuclear reactor that’s safe powering whole cities instead of the pollution that is now created from burning fossil fuels or even the hundreds of nuclear fission reactors around the world. Reference

Arce, N.(2019) Nuclear Fusion Reactor Reaches Temperatures Hotter Than Sun’s Core. Retrieved from http://www.techtimes.com/articles/229893/20180612/nuclear-fusion-reactor-reaches-temperatures-hotter-than-sun-s-core.htm

McDonald, G. (2019). Will Nuclear Fusion Energy Arrive in Time to Mitigate Climate Change?. Retrieved from http://www.seeker.com/energy/will-nuclear-fusion-energy-arrive-in-time-to-mitigate-climate-change

Ferris, D. (2019). Advancement in nuclear fusion tech continues transition to clean energy future. Retrieved from http://www.teslarati.com/nuclear-fusion-exhaust-technology-clean-energy-future/

“Germany “star in a jar” reactor closer to producing fusion energy”. (2019). Retreived from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5886603/Germanys-star-jar-fusion-reactor-comes-step-closer-producing-LIMITLESS-energy.html

China’s “artificial sun” is now hot enough for nuclear fusion. (2019). Retreived from http://futurism.com/artifical-sun-china-temperature-record