Nuclear Fusion: Learning From Failure

Nuclear Fusion: Learning From Failure

Wednesday, April 1, 2009. "After more than a decade of work and an investment of $3.5 billion, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory say they have created a super laser that will enable them to build a miniature sun within the lab in the next two years" (Doyle, 2009).

Since the middle of that last century, scientists have attempted to capture the same energy that powers the sun, to produce an energy source that is inexpensive, clean, and limitless. Now, they think they are within two to three years of making the first nuclear fusion ignition which would be the first step in that process.

Smash two atoms together; their nuclei join -- or "fuse" -- creating one very heavy atom and energy is released. That's it. In the sun, hydrogen atoms are smashed together by the enormous amount of gravitational pressure, creating a heavy atom of helium and creating "tons" of energy, at a temperature of 10 to 15 million degrees. The pressure needed to do this are about 100 times the pressure felt in the deepest trenches of Earth's oceans. In other words, it would be simple, if we could recreate the temperature and pressure conditions of the sun (Brooks, 2009, pp. 58-59).

Scientists have theorized that, by using heavy hydrogen, and deuterium and tritium, available in abundance in sea water, that there is enough energy present in our oceans to meet our requirements. However, after decades of experiments, it has become obvious that reality doesn't necessarily follow theory (Brooks, 2009, p. 59).

It has been a long road with many failures, but many successes as well as we discover the practical applications and necessary test conditions to produce pure fusion. In over fifty years of experiments, not one attempt at igniting nuclear fusion has been successful. Probably the most infamous, but not so certain, failure was the 1989 announcement by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, chemists at the University of Utah, that they had discovered "cold fusion" -- a simple, inexpensive way to produce nuclear fusion. With "tabletop" equipment, they proudly proclaimed, the mystery had been solved. After millions of research dollars and countless nuclear scientists becoming involved in recreating their spectacular, world-changing discovery, it was determined, in a controversial decision, that cold fusion was impossible (Kahney, 1999). However, the U.S. Navy continued to research the project under the budget anonymity of "miscellaneous." In 2004, the U.S. Department of Energy announced that there might be something to cold fusion, and suggested that funding agencies should consider requests for research dollars (Brooks, 2009, p. 64). Research continues to this day, and limited indications of possible success have been achieved on a small scale. Fleischmann and Pons may have been correct, after all.

The whole experiment regarding cold fusion has been a disaster on the surface. However, through the persistence of a few scientists, curiosity, and chance, this failure created a heat and energy source that could not be explained. It did change our scientific perspective that nuclear fusion had to be created out of some fantastic explosion of science that would rock the world. We learned that, perhaps, the simplest of experiments could lead to the next step and then, the next, perhaps until success is achieved.

In 2005, a small but verified experiment produced a fusion reaction inside a foot long cylinder five inches in diameter using lithium tantalite, which is a pyroelectric material, and deuterium gas. However it was found that only about one in a million collisions caused fusion. (Buhl, 2005, p. 5)

Under lessons learned, though, is that this device could someday be used for irradiating tumors, creating baggage scanners and powering small spacecraft by utilizing the neutrons generated by the tiny reaction inside (Buhl, 2005, p. 6).

Another lesson learned by the fusion research has been its impact on the development of future nuclear weapons vs. existing test ban treaties. It would be possible with successful nuclear fusion results to test weapons without an actual above or below ground explosion due to the nature of the science. The question is raised whether that would be a violation of the nuclear test ban treaties. Also, the potential power of these weapons is mind-boggling -- perhaps 100x existing nuclear weapons. They make the atomic and hydrogen bombs look like firecrackers in comparison.

The mere thought of pure fusion weapons has given pause for thought, and the development of even minor successes in this field cause lessons to be learned about the future control and management of fusion devices.

Present

Most importantly, the fifty years of research into nuclear fusion have brought the world to the point of learning enough lessons to build the latest major fusion project: agreement in 2006 to build the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in France by a consortium of nations including the U.S., EU, India, Japan, China, Russia and South Korea. This design is a "tokamak" facility, or capable of creating magnetic confinement fusion.

Three other tokamak facilities have been built and are operating in Japan, the UK, and in New Jersey (Nuttall, 2008, p. 6).

What have we learned from the research conducted at these facilities since the early 1980s?

From the Institute of Physics Report:

"Together these three machines have demonstrated the scientific fundamentals of fusion power production. For instance, researchers at JT-60 demonstrated that even once the initial driving transformer sweep has ended, it should be possible to continue to operate the tokamak by means of an external current drive -- an important step towards continuous electricity generation" (Nuttall, 2008, p. 6).