Fusion Energy
Fusion News Digest
The advances in fusion energy R&D have been significant over the past couple of years.
Read about these here: Link to Fusion News
What is Fusion Energy?
Fusion energy refers to the energy released by fusing light nuclei. When two light nuclei fuse to form a heavier nucleus, the resulting energy can be used as a source of power. Nuclear fusion has several important advantages over fission.
Significant advances in materials and computing power now enable much more rapid progress in fusion energy development!
More than 30 commercial companies are working on a variety of approaches to containing a fusion energy plasma. In addition major R&D projects are under way at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as well as at numerous academic institutions.
Advantages of Fusion Energy
- No carbon emissions
- The only by-products of fusion reactions are small amounts of helium, which is an inert gas that will not add to atmospheric pollution
- Abundant fuels
- Fuel is purified from sea water
- No long-lived radioactive waste
- Safety
- No danger of a run-away reaction or melt-down
- Non-weaponizable
- Components of fusion system cannot be diverted into weapons