Advancing the Economic Viability of Nuclear Fusion
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering (NPRE) will have their research on making fusion reactors smaller and more economically viable tested on September 11th using a Tokamak (magnetic) fusion reactor in China. The NPRE researchers, led by Prof. David Ruzic, at the Center for Plasma Material Interactions (CPMI) have designed a method for cooling a fusion reactor using self-circulating molten lithium. This could potentially reduce the size of the fusion reactor’s radius by close to a third. A smaller reactor would help make fusion energy more cost comparable to fission energy, as the NPRE article highlights:
For decades, scientists have been dreaming of harnessing nuclear fusion, the power of the stars and sun, to provide safe, clean and virtually unlimited energy. But among deterrents, the size that a fusion reactor facility needs to be to sustain plasma so it is hot enough to fuse particles is so great (about 100 million degrees Celsius) that it is not cost-effective. According to Ruzic, an entire fission nuclear reactor and steam generator could fit inside the central core of ITER, the International Thermonuclear Experimental fusion Reactor being built in France.
In comparison, a fission reactor now costs 10 times less than a fusion reactor to build, and lasts for 50 years as opposed to a fusion reactor’s few months of life.
The key to CPMI’s proposed solution to reduce the facility’s size lies in using molten lithium as the material in contact with the plasma in the diverter portion of a fusion reactor. Most of the heat striking the walls of a fusion reactor is collected and removed at the diverter.
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