Abstract
In a recent report, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) recommends that “the United States should start a national program of accompanying research and technology leading to the construction of a compact pilot plant that produces electricity from fusion at the lowest possible capital cost.” It is generally acknowledged that a decarbonization of the world’s energy system is unavoidable to combat climate change. While an exothermic chemical reaction such as the combustion of fossil fuels produces an energy of <1 eV per molecule, a nuclear fusion reaction is an attractive alternative as it releases 10 million times more energy. To date, considerable effort has been devoted to research involving the fusion between the nuclei of the two heavy isotopes of hydrogen: deuterium (D) and tritium (T). However, the main roadblock for the adoption of this technology is the need to heat the fuel to temperatures in the order of 50 million Kelvin and to keep it stable under extreme pressure conditions. Recent results show that this difficulty can be overcome by utilizing the nonthermal radiation pressure that can be generated via chirped-pulse amplifier laser systems and can trigger the fusion of hydrogen and boron-11 nuclei, producing clean energy in the form of kinetic alpha particles, thus sidestepping nuclear radiation problems due to the aneutronic nature of the process.
Highlights
In a recent report, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) recommends that “the United States should start a national program of accompanying research and technology leading to the construction of a compact pilot plant that produces electricity from fusion at the lowest possible capital cost.” It is generally acknowledged that a decarbonization of the world’s energy system is unavoidable to combat climate change
This is acknowledged by the United States National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) who clearly recommended in a recent report to focus on nuclear fusion research, a technology that has enormous potential to play an essential role in the future.[1]
When Lord Rutherford discovered nuclear physics over 120 years ago, he realized that the exchanged energy per nuclear reaction is about 10 million times higher than the energy involved in chemical reactions
Summary
Human progress always was and still is dependent on the availability of an abundant source of energy. The rapid rate of climate change and the resulting massive impacts on the environment that are caused by our reliance on fossil fuels means that the development of clean energy sources has become one of the most pressing issues of our times This is acknowledged by the United States National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) who clearly recommended in a recent report to focus on nuclear fusion research, a technology that has enormous potential to play an essential role in the future.[1] The urgency of this problem is reflected in the medium- to long-term energy projections that the International Energy Agency regularly provides using the so-called World Energy Model. An advanced and innovative scheme that utilizes this approach for direct electricity generation was very recently proposed by one of the authors and was subsequently granted a US patent.[10]
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