Is nuclear fusion possible?

Normally, fusion is not possible because the strongly repulsive electrostatic forces between the positively charged nuclei prevent them from getting close enough together to collide and for fusion to occur.
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Will fusion ever be possible?

There's huge uncertainty about when fusion power will be ready for commercialisation. One estimate suggests maybe 20 years. Then fusion would need to scale up, which would mean a delay of perhaps another few decades.
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Can we perform nuclear fusion on Earth?

In order to achieve fusion on Earth, gases need to be heated to extremely high temperatures of about 150 million degrees Celsius. That is 10 times more than the temperatures in the Sun's core.
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Is nuclear fusion the future?

Nuclear fusion has long been considered the energy of the future: a supposedly infinite source of power that does not produce CO2 emissions. However, after decades of research, it is still to deliver on its potential.
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Can scientists do nuclear fusion?

There are many research institutions working on the problem worldwide. Recently, a laboratory in China achieved a fusion temperature of about 70,000,000°C for over 17 minutes – a fantastic achievement, but still some way off from being a commercial source of energy.
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Fusion Power Explained – Future or Failure



How close are we to nuclear fusion?

This article was originally published in The Oxford Scientist Michaelmas Term 2021 edition, Change. Nuclear fusion is supposedly 'always 30 years away'. It was however first theorised about a hundred years ago.
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Is cold fusion possible?

“There is no theoretical reason to expect cold fusion to be possible, and a vast amount of well-established science that says it should be impossible,” says Close, who was involved in efforts to replicate the original 1989 experiment.
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Can nuclear be infinite?

Electricity from Nuclear Power. Nuclear power plants are fueled by uranium, a naturally-occurring element found in the Rocky Mountains and in countries such as Canada, Australia and South Africa. The nearly infinite energy that is stored in uranium atoms makes nuclear power possible.
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Is fusion safer than fission?

Is Fusion or Fission More Dangerous? Nuclear fission is more dangerous than fusion as it produces harmful weapons-grade radioactive waste in the fuel rods that need to be stored safely away for thousands of years.
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Has fusion been achieved?

A 24-year-old nuclear-fusion record has crumbled. Scientists at the Joint European Torus (JET) near Oxford, UK, announced on 9 February that they had generated the highest sustained energy pulse ever created by fusing together atoms, more than doubling their own record from experiments performed in 1997.
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Why is fusion so difficult?

Normally, fusion is not possible because the strongly repulsive electrostatic forces between the positively charged nuclei prevent them from getting close enough together to collide and for fusion to occur.
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Can we create a star on Earth?

It's not just possible -- it's already been done. If you think of a star as a nuclear fusion machine, mankind has duplicated the nature of stars on Earth. But this revelation has qualifiers. The examples of fusion here on Earth are on a small scale and last for just a few seconds at most.
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Could a fusion power plant be safe?

The fusion process is inherently safe. In a fusion reactor, there will only be a limited amount of fuel (less than four grams) at any given moment. The reaction relies on a continuous input of fuel; if there is any perturbation in this process and the reaction ceases immediately.
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Why is there no nuclear fusion yet?

One of the biggest reasons why we haven't been able to harness power from fusion is that its energy requirements are unbelievably, terribly high. In order for fusion to occur, you need a temperature of at least 100,000,000 degrees Celsius. That's slightly more than 6 times the temperature of the Sun's core.
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Could a fusion reactor explode?

Fortunately, the reactor cannot explode. A nuclear explosion cannot occur because the fuel is not compact enough to allow an uncontrolled chain reaction. The MIT reactor has a lot of water and core structural materials that slow the neutrons down before they reach other fissile atoms.
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How do you create nuclear fusion?

Mechanism. Fusion reactions occur when two or more atomic nuclei come close enough for long enough that the nuclear force pulling them together exceeds the electrostatic force pushing them apart, fusing them into heavier nuclei.
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Was Chernobyl fission or fusion?

The Chernobyl accident occurred on April 26, 1986, when a nuclear fission reactor core in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union overheated causing a steam explosion and fire. This incident and the following nuclear contamination are estimated to have killed between 4,000-90,000 people.
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Is the sun nuclear?

The sun is like a big nuclear submarine in the sky. That's right, it's fueled by nuclear reactions that fuse hydrogen atoms together into helium and other heavier elements, releasing huge amounts of energy in the process.
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Is the sun a fission or fusion?

In the core of the Sun hydrogen is being converted into helium. This is called nuclear fusion. It takes four hydrogen atoms to fuse into each helium atom.
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How long will our uranium last?

Uranium abundance: At the current rate of uranium consumption with conventional reactors, the world supply of viable uranium, which is the most common nuclear fuel, will last for 80 years. Scaling consumption up to 15 TW, the viable uranium supply will last for less than 5 years.
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Will we ever run out of uranium?

If the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) has accurately estimated the planet's economically accessible uranium resources, reactors could run more than 200 years at current rates of consumption.
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How much plutonium is left in the world?

The global stockpile of separated plutonium was about 545 tons.
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What if cold fusion is real?

Each home could heat itself and produce its own electricity, probably using a form of water as fuel. Even automobiles might be cold fusion powered. Massive generators and ugly power lines could be eliminated, along with imported oil and our contribution to the greenhouse effect.
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Is nuclear fusion safe?

Given that a fusion reaction could come to a halt within seconds, the process is inherently safe. “Fusion is a self-limiting process: if you cannot control the reaction, the machine switches itself off,” she added. Furthermore, fusion does not produce highly radioactive, long lived nuclear waste.
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Does fusion energy create waste?

A fusion power plant produces radioactive waste because the high-energy neutrons produced by fusion activate the walls of the plasma vessel. The intensity and duration of this activation depend on the material impinged on by the neutrons.
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