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Nuclear fusion reactor in South Korea runs at 100 million degrees C for a record-breaking 48 seconds
(www.livescience.com)
this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2024
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Sorry im not any sort of scientist here but i thought energy could not be created or destroyed so to get a net-positive energy out we would need to keep feeding in fuel, is this correct?
And if so, how?
energy is not created nor destroyed, however something can change forms, which gives off energy.
how stars work in fusion is that their high pressure and high temperatures allow for the fusion of particles. hydrogren (1 protonl fuses with another to produce helium (2 protons). in a stars life, that cycle continues. elements fuse till it hits iron (the end point of fusion). which then a stars life.is considered dead and eventually black hole stuff starts to happen due to density of star.
the power is actually not "infinite" its limited by the fuel supply available (hydrogren), but the net energy in to energy out is positive if the fuel source exists.
Yes but how do you keep feeding this kind of reaction? I imagine you cant just drop more fuel 'down a tube'. Do they shut down the reactor and then restart it with fresh material?
I assume they shoot the fuel in with some light particle acceleration. Maybe they just let it diffuse in, but it's a gas so it's not that hard to get it to enter.
The hope is they get the cost of maintaining the electromagnets (power and cooling) to be cheaper than the power we can extract from the reaction.
My question is more about what's the logistics of getting power out? We're making a lot of heat, so it's probably steam power at the heart of it, but a lot of this effort is to keep the heat in is it not?
I’m not an expert but I believe the fuel is hydrogen. Hydrogen atoms fuse together to produce helium + energy