av Ralph
Kube, Stipendiat
ved Institutt for fysikk og teknologi, Universitet i Tromsø
Research in fusion
energy began in the 1950s when researchers realized the huge energy potential
that was possible to harness from this energy source. At the time, tapping the
strong nuclear force as energy source was only possible through nuclear fission,
which is by splitting unstable heavy nuclei and utilizing the residual heat.
On the one hand, fission
plants deliver steadily large amounts of electricity. On the other hand, this
same power source has been responsible for large catastrophes, where their
far-reaching consequences still difficult to grasp.
So why not harvesting
energy through fusion instead, it is safer. Reaction yields for fusion
processes are in the same order of magnitude as for fission processes and
around 3 orders of magnitude larger than for chemical reactions.
The original idea for a
fusion reactor is, as phrased by the French Nobel laureate Pierre-Gilles de
Gennes, "We say that we will put
the sun into a box. The idea is pretty. The problem is, we don't know how to make
the box." This has been the major research focus in nuclear fusion for the
past 40 years, in a nutshell.
To sustain a fusion
reaction, one has to heat up gas to some 150.000.000 kelvin so that the gas
turns into plasma,
