The US has also entered the race for nuclear fusion … finally!

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The US has also entered the race for nuclear fusion ... finally!
The Us Has Also Entered The Race For Nuclear Fusion

The US has also entered the race for nuclear fusion ... finally!

Nuclear fission is a process in which a heavy nucleus splits into two more stable fragments. The applications of fission are numerous, but in Italy fission power plants for energy production are banned by a referendum in 1986, following the Chernobyl disaster. Fusion, on the other hand, is a process in which two light nuclei merge to form a heavier and more stable one.

A fission event produces a hundred million times more energy than coal. The energy released in a fusion event is ten times higher than fission. However, the design of a fusion power plant transforming energy into electricity is much more complex. The reason billions are spent on fusion research is that “Slag” of the fusion it would be helium and hydrogen, which we breathe every day without any problem.

In 2007, the EU started a collaboration for the construction of a fusion power plant, call ITER. The works are proceeding quickly, while the end of the assembly works should be in 2025 and the first ignition is planned for 2035. The tomahawk reactor (donut-shaped) promises to show that fusion of hydrogen (2-H, 3-H) into helium (4-He) is possible without most of the energy produced being dissipated into heat.

The US has been strangely inefficient in organizing a fusion research plan. Bickering over making research public or military has been a constant for the past decade. No university has received government funding to start such a challenging project.
Until now. The Department of Energy (DOE) has presented a plan for a prototype nuclear fusion power plant which will be finished in 2045. The project will be in the hands of MIT and the power plant will be smaller and cheaper than ITER. The DOE said it wanted to develop the project quickly, to allow for positive implications on climate change.

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