Fusion Reactors Suddenly there is a lot being said about fusion reactors. This may not sound important to most people but if a working fusion reactor can be created, it will change the world. There is a big difference between fusion and fission reactors. We have fission nuclear reactors all over the world and while most have not had problems, the ones that have, have had big problems which affect the entire world. The famous accident at Chernobyl caused radiation to be released which swept all around the globe several times and eventually killed many people in the Ukraine and probably in other places. The Fujiyama nuclear accident is still leaking radiation and it is being said a crisis will exist there for years which could eventually affect all of us by increasing the amount of radiation in the oceans and atmosphere. Fission reactors are very dangerous and the expended fuel stays radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years making it impossible to guarantee it can be stored safely. Even when it is put into caves and such there is no guarantee that will work because the earth moves over the centuries and we could be creating a big problem for future generations. Not so with fusion reactors. A fusion reactor can not have a meltdown or a runaway reaction. Fusion reactors use deuterium which is found in seawater and tritium can be generated from lithium inside the reactor. The fuels pose little danger to the earth. There are no harmful exhausts and the only emission is helium which is in demand and can be used for other things. Finally, there is no long-lived harmful waste being generated which would have to be stored. Scientists have been trying to create a fusion reactor for years and even though they have created them from time to time there was a problem with them. They took more fuel than the energy they produced. In other words, they were running on a minus ledger. More was going in than coming out. Having a fusion reactor doing this would make no sense commercially so the ones we do have are experimental and are being used to try and get to the point where more energy comes out than goes in. There have been rumors of fusion reactors which work and even patents being filed but we are yet to see a fusion reactor which can be economical. It does make me wonder if even a fusion reactor which is not economical might be useful as a weapons platform. For example, the navy may not care how much fuel it would take to get the reactor to power a deadly laser. If this is the case, we may secretly have weapons powered by fusion reactors already and not know it. There is a history of scientists claiming they have discovered how to create fusion in a lab called cold fusion. Some claim to have done this but others who tried to repeat the experiment have not been able to duplicate the results. We know hot fusion takes place in stars and such, but cold fusion would not need the high temperatures to produce the same result and if it can be accomplished would be incredible. In 1989 two scientists claimed they had accomplished cold fusion. This led to them being criticized by the scientific community. It has been believed since the 1920s that cold fusion could be possible. It is really strange so many scientists claim cold fusion is possible and people have accomplished it which the rest of the scientific community says they have not. Nuclear fusion could actually change the world. It would be the ultimate green energy and available to every country no matter where they are located or the wind, sun and ocean conditions. Today countries are subject to their environment when considering which energy source to use if they want to generate green power. There are over a dozen fusion projects taking place around the world. China had built a fusion reactor which reaches temperatures seven times hotter than the sun’s core which is supposed to make hydrogen atoms fuse into helium. I am not a scientist but here is what I don’t understand. IF the sun operates by fusion why would we need a reactor producing more heat than the sun to get the same job done? Still the Chinese scientists must know what they are doing. MIT is collaborating with Commonwealth Fusion Systems to build a fusion reactor which it hopes will produce more energy than it consumes. I would just like to mention this fact before going further. Not every scientist believes the sun operates on fusion, at least the fusion of hydrogen we are working on. A couple think if it did it would have used up all its fuel a long time ago. Could it be we are going about creating a fusion reactor the wrong way? It is said the sun has only lost a mass about the size of the planet Saturn since its beginning. An article appeared in 2014 which stated Lockheed Martin claimed to have designed a fusion reactor small enough to fit into a truck and went on to say soon there would be one small enough to fit into a fighter jet. Fusion is about four times more powerful than a fission reactor. The problem is how does one control all the heat which would be generated? The article claims Lockheed Martin’s fusion reactor does produce more energy than it uses. They also claimed within five years the reactor would actually be functioning. The head engineer said, "Our compact fusion concept combines several alternative magnetic confinement approaches, taking the best parts of each, and offers a 90 percent size reduction over previous concepts." Many people mistakenly believe this reactor will stop climate change. They don’t take into consideration the fact nature had caused climate change before, even when no humans were on the planet. They seem to think all climate change has a human cause. If we do conquer fusion, I think we will have to look to computers to get an idea of where things will go. Over the years computers have gotten smaller and smaller and more and more powerful. If that happens with fusion reactors, they will be powering everything. There will no longer be any reason to fuel up cars and pay for electricity. Each home might have their own fusion reactor in the future because they might become cheap enough just like computers have. They might spur use for other things we have never thought about and of course will be used as weapons and power sources for the military.
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