Science in Seconds - Fusion
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Science in Seconds
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RAVES - Fusion
Rheanna Sand: Imagine a pellet the size of a pinhead
that carries the energy of a barrel of oil,
but without the pesky carbon footprint.
No, it's not meth. It's fusion.
Fusion is a source of nuclear energy
that comes from smashing atoms together to form bigger atoms.
Hydrogen into helium.
This is the energy that fuels the stars...
and the DeLorean in Back to the Future two and three.
While researchers at the Livermore Lab near San Francisco
haven't had success with banana peels quite yet,
they do expect to ignite a pellet made of heavy hydrogen
sometime in the next year.
This would be the world's first controlled fusion reaction.
Uncontrolled fusion is what was used
to incinerate Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945.
We know how to set fusion off
and let it proceed at its natural explosive pace,
but the real prize is the ability to control
the amount of heat produced.
The goal is to create steam-generated electricity,
similar to what is done in nuclear power plants today,
except that they harness the heat of fission
as they break atoms apart.
The Livermore team appears to have cleared many hurdles
standing in the way of fusion.
They've built the world's most powerful laser
to force the hydrogen atoms together.
They've constructed an elaborate mirrored set-up
to ensure that the fuel is heated evenly,
and have found ways to maintain a high level
of smoothness in the pellet while it heats.
So, this team might provide the world with the cleanest,
most abundant energy source known to humankind.
Let's just hope they aren't a bunch of dreamers
spending billions of dollars and megajoules of laser energy
burning the **** out of a tiny hydrogen pellet.
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