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Nuclear Energy - The Practice
Nuclear energy is the usable energy extracted from atomic nuclei via controlled nuclear reactions and nuclear power plants have been used for commercial electricity generation for over half a century. In 2005, 16% of the world's electricity was generated by nuclear power (Source - Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI)) and as of July 2008, there were more than 430 operating nuclear power plants worldwide. In addition, over 150 nuclear powered naval vessels have been built. It seems ironic that these complex, high technology, fission and fusion energy sources are only used as heat sources to boil water with the electricity being generated by decades old steam turbine technology.
The Great Nuclear DebateAlthough there is agreement that new sources of clean, renewable energy are required, whether or not nuclear power is the answer is heavily disputed with the battle being fought on two fronts, economics and safety. The facts are not in question. Both proponents (pros) and critics (contras) use the same facts, to justify their claims. Differences revolve around how the facts are interpreted, the emphasis placed on what is relevant or important and how intangible benefits and drawbacks are valued. There are also unknowns, mostly about the risks involved and our ability to control them.
This page covers the practical implementation of both fission and fusion technologies and sticks to the engineering principles, leaving the debate to others.
A detailed explanation of the physics of nuclear energy release by nuclear decay, fission and fusion is given on the Nuclear Energy Theory page
Nuclear Fission ReactorsThe only nuclear plants producing nuclear power commercially today use fission reactors. Attempts to generate power by fusion reactions have so far not produced commercial success. Fusion reactors are discussed below as are nuclear batteries. All utility scale nuclear power plants simply use the reactor as a "nuclear boiler" to raise the steam which is then used to drive conventional steam turbine powered generators using the Rankine steam cycle in much the same way as in fossil fuel plants with much of the same equipment. Instead of burning fossil fuels to provide the heat source in the boiler, heat is generated in a nuclear reactor by the controlled nuclear fission of unstable isotopes of heavy metals such as Uranium. The Reaction The majority of fission reactors are designed to capture the energy released by the fission of Uranium-235 in a controlled chain reaction. Most of this energy appears as heat which is used to raise steam. Though fissions are initiated by neutrons produced by previous fissions, the process is not spontaneous. The reactor components and operating processes are described below.
When the reactor is loaded with new fuel rods there are no free neutrons (theoretically*) to initiate the reaction, even if there is a critical mass of fuel. The radioactive decay of the Uranium isotopes used emits only ionisation particles but not neutrons. A neutron source is therefore needed to get the reaction going. Suitable neutron sources are alpha particle emitters, such as Americum-241, Polonium-210 or Radium Bromide, mixed with a lightweight isotope such as Beryllium-9. Alpha particles from the decay cause the Beryllium to transmute into Carbon-12 a releasing neutrons. Once the chain reaction is begun, the starter source is removed from the core to prevent damage from the subsequent hostile conditions in the reactor core. * It is possible that there could be a few mischievous neutrons wandering around looking for trouble. Very dangerous if you have assembled a critical mass of fuel. A limited number of neutrons will always be present, even in a reactor core that has never been operated, due to spontaneous fission of some heavy nuclides that are present in the fuel. Uranium- 238, Uranium-235, and Plutonium-239 undergo spontaneous fission to a limited extent. Uranium- 238, for example, yields almost 60 neutrons per hour per gram, Putonium-239 about twice that and Uranium-235 about four times that. (Source - Neutron Sources DOE-HDBK-1019/1-93) During refuelling in an operating plant it is also possible that there are unabsorbed free neutrons in the radioactive waste remaining from previous fissions.
Fission Reactor Components Most reactors contain the same basic components, though the active materials used may differ imposing radically different design requirements on the construction of the ancillary components.
At the centre of the reactor is the core where the nuclear reaction takes place. It contains the fissile material in the form of long fuel rods which are usually placed vertically in the core. The pressure vessel usually made from steel, contains the reactor core, the control rods and the surrounding moderator and coolant.
As noted in the nuclear energy theory page, fissile materials are particular isotopes of Uranium and Plutonium. Uranium, the heaviest naturally occurring element, is 40 times more abundant in the Earth's crust than Silver and is about as common as Tin or Zinc. Naturally occurring Uranium is 99.2745 percent Uranium-238, with Uranium-235 the fissile isotope used in most reactors making up only about 0.720 percent, and Uranium-234 filling in the remainder at less than 0.0055 percent.
The Uranium fuel is normally used in its ceramic Uranium oxide form which has a melting point of 2800°C and for most applications the percentage of the fissile Uranium-235 is enriched to increase the probability of neutron capture thus facilitating the fission process. Using enriched Uranium also allows the reactor core to be made physically smaller than the core needed for an unenriched Uranium reactor.
The target percentage of U-235 used in the typical light water reactors used for electrical power generation, is from 3% to 5% of the total Uranium charge. For weapons grade Uranium however the concentration is much higher at around 85% to 90%.
The initial processes take place near to where the Uranium is mined. Uranium ores are crushed into small particles about 1 cm diameter and treated in a leaching process with steam, sodium chlorate and sulphuric acid to dissolve the Uranium out of the rock. The resulting aqueous solution is decanted and filtered and then concentrated, first into an organic phase by treatment with various organic solvents, then further concentrated into a second aqueous phase and finally precipitated into a solid oxide form by treatment with Ammonia. After filtering and drying this solid Uranium oxide (U3O8) is known as yellowcake. The rest of the fuel preparation may take place nearer to where the fuel is used. Only 14% of all reactors use natural Uranium fuel, whereas 85% use enriched fuel and 1% use other fuels. The process of "enrichment" to concentrate the percentage of the isotope U-235 in the fuel involves differentiating between the isotopes present in the refined material on the basis of differences in their physical properties. The separation process is thus based on the mass and size of the molecules and since these differences are minute, the processes used involve many repetitive stages to achieve appreciable separation.
Practical enrichment processes need the fuel to be in gaseous form. The yellowcake must therefore be converted, via a series of chemical process steps, into Uranium hexafluoride UF6 which is the only compound of Uranium which exists as a gas at a suitable temperature. At atmospheric pressure UF6 is a is a white, dense, crystalline solid resembling rock salt below a temperature of 57°C and transforms directly from a solid to a gas at that temperature without going through a liquid phase. Liquid UF6 is formed only at temperatures greater than 64°C and at pressures greater than 1.5 times atmospheric pressure.
The UF6 gas is rotated at extremely high speeds of 100,000 rpm or more in a centrifuge and due to the centrifugal force the heavier U-238 isotopes tend to move towards the outside increasing very slightly the concentration of the heavier isotopes at the periphery compared with a slightly higher concentration of the lighter U-235 isotopes nearer the centre. The gases are withdrawn and the heavier gases are passed through a series of centrifuges to concentrate the proportion of U-238 while the lighter gases are recycled back to lower stages to concentrate the proportion of U-235. In the diffusion process the UF6 gas is passed through a series of several hundred sets of very fine membranes. Separation depends on the lighter U-235 isotopes passing more quickly through the barriers than the larger U-238 isotopes. The holes in the membrane must be microscopic (approximately one-millionth of an inch in diameter) and uniform in size. The porosity must always be high to enable high flow rates and the membrane must not react with the highly corrosive hexafluoride.
After the enriched Uranium has been separated from the natural fuel, the percentage of fissile Uranium-235 remaining in the so called Depleted Uranium is reduced to between 0.2% and 0.3%, the rest being fertile Uranium-238 which can be used in breeder reactors to create more fuel.
Once the UF6 gas has been enriched the Uranium must be converted into a form suitable for use in the nuclear reactor. This is generally as Uranium dioxide UO2 since in this metallic oxide form it is chemically stable up to temperatures over 2000°C, high enough to survive the high working temperatures in the reactor core. First the gas is converted into a powder of UO2 which is subsequently sintered to form small pellets about 10mm in diameter and 10mm high.
Fuel canisters must be able to withstand high temperature working and have high mechanical strength with low neutron absorption characteristics In large Light Water Reactors (LWR) and Pressurised Water Reactors (PWR), pellets of enriched uranium oxide arranged in rods of zircaloy an alloy of Zirconium. Early Gas Cooled Reactors (GCR) used magnesium alloy to contain the fuel but this was replaced in later reactors by stainless steel which is able to withstand higher temperatures.
The world's present measured resources of Uranium are enough to last for about 100 years at current and projected consumption rates. This represents a higher level of assured resources than is normal for most minerals. Further exploration and higher prices will certainly yield further resources as present ones are used up.
A major safety system in nuclear reactors is provided by control rods of Boron, Cadmium or Graphite which absorb neutrons created by the fission process removing them from the active mass thus preventing further fissions from taking place. Because of their atomic structure these elements absorb neutrons, but do not fission or split. The rate of the chain reaction can be controlled by progressively inserting the control rods into, or removing them from the reactor core and the reactor can be quickly shut down by dropping the control rods into the core. The energy of the free neutrons must be within certain limits for for fission to occur. High energy neutrons emitted by the fission process move too quickly to be captured by the fissile atoms and so must be slowed down or moderated to increase their chances of causing fission. Water, heavy water and graphite are moderators which are commonly used in the reactor core to slow down the neutrons. Certain hydrides, hydrocarbons, Beryllium and Beryllium oxide are also used for this purpose. Note that some moderators can also act as coolants. Reactors with moderators are called thermal reactors. Reactors without moderators are termed Fast Neutron Reactors because the speed of the neutrons is not controlled.
See more about moderators. The reactor core acts as a heat exchanger in which the coolant, which may be either a liquid or a gas, surrounds the fuel rods and captures the heat generated by the nuclear reaction. The coolant also acts as the thermal working fluid which is used either directly or indirectly to raise steam to drive a turbine generator.
Coolants must be good conductors of heat with low susceptibility to induced radioactivity and capable of operating at high temperatures. A variety of substances, including light water, heavy water, air, Carbon dioxide, Helium, molten metals such as Sodium, Sodium-Potassium alloy, Lead and Lead-Bismuth alloy as well as hydrocarbons (oils), have been used for this purpose.
Reactors are contained inside a huge reinforced concrete casing often incorporating a steel inner structure which acts as a radiation shield and is designed to prevent the release of radioactivity into the environment in case of an accident in the reactor as well as to protect the reactor from external events such as earthquakes, aircraft impacts and deliberate acts of sabotage. The notorious meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in 1986 was initiated by operator malpractice which inadequate safety systems failed to prevent. Because the reactor was not enclosed in a containment building, vast areas of the countryside were contaminated with deadly radioactive debris. By contrast, in the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island when the reactor core went into partial meltdown and was destroyed when the cooling system failed due to the loss of coolant, the radioactive debris were successfully contained within the containment building.
Cooling is another major challenge in reactor design. Heat is extracted from the reactor core by one or more tightly controlled, closed, heat transfer circuits and used to power a conventional steam or gas turbine generator. Many variations are possible.
The Rankine cycle describes a thermodynamic power cycle in which the working fluid is alternately vaporized and condensed as it recirculates in a closed cycle. It is similar to the Carnot cycle the except that it takes into account the energy absorbed and returned by the reversible liquid/gas phase changes which reduce somewhat the efficiency of the thermal cycle. The Rankine Efficiency is proportional to (1-TL/TH) where TL is the fluid temperature at the low heat point in the cycle the output temperature and TH is the fluid temperature at the high heat point, the input temperature. As with the Carnot cycle, the thermal efficiency is improved by maximising the temperature difference between the input and output points. The thermal cycle used in steam engines is an example of the Rankine cycle.
The Brayton cycle, sometimes called the Joule cycle, describes the thermodynamic power cycle associated with the compression and expansion of a gaseous working fluid. Analogous to the Carnot cycle the thermal efficiency is maximised by increasing the pressure difference between the input and output points. The Brayton cycle is used to represent the thermal cycle used in gas turbines. In gas cooled nuclear reactors in which the gas coolant is used directly to drive the turbine, heat from the reactor increases the pressure of the gas in the reactor heat exchanger and the pressurised gas gives up its energy by expansion in the turbine. Like the Carnot cycle the Brayton cycle does not encompass a phase change and hence it has the potential for higher efficiencies.
In single stage cooling systems the reactor coolant or thermal working fluid, either steam or in some cases gas, is used directly to drive a turbine generator. The boiling water reactor (BWR) is typical of a single stage system. It uses a single water circuit in which the steam is generated directly in the reactor core and used to drive the turbine.
It is a relatively simple design in principle, characterised by the Rankine thermodynamic cycle, but it needs complex control systems to ensure safety. This has the disadvantages that mildly radioactive coolant from the reactor core passes outside of the containment building and that radioactivity can build up in the turbine. The Fukushima nuclear power plants in Japan damaged by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami were boiling water reactors. Despite the high technology steam generation, the system efficiency is still bound by Carnot's Law and limited by the maximum temperature difference achievable in the steam cycle. Typical system efficiency is 33% to 36%.
For safety reasons a two stage system is employed to separate the thermal circuit used to drive the steam turbine from the primary thermal circuit which removes the heat from the reactor. The heat generated by the reactor is not used directly to raise steam to drive the turbine generator. Instead, the working fluid in the primary (reactor) circuit transfers its heat through a second heat exchanger to a secondary circuit which is essentially the same as the steam turbine thermal circuit used in a conventional fossil fuelled electricity generating plant but with the steam raising boiler replaced by the secondary heat exchanger. In this way the possibilities of escape of radioactive materials due to leaks of the coolant which has passed through the reactor core can be limited to within the containment building. This configuration also allows more flexibility in the choice of the reactor coolant so that the working fluid in the primary (reactor) heat transfer circuit may be water, gas or a molten metal. The added complexity of the double loop cooling system however introduces efficiency losses and extra cost into the system. The pressurised water reactor (PWR) is an example of a two stage system. Water at a very high pressure is used as the coolant in the primary circuit and steam is raised in a heat exchanger in the secondary circuit. The working fluid in the secondary circuit is not subject to radioactive contamination.
High temperature reactors using molten metal coolants in the primary circuit may use Helium in a Brayton cycle in the secondary circuit operating at 1000°C to achieve very efficiencies of up to 60%.
The system efficiency is similar to the boiling water reactor at 33% to 36%
Fission Reactor typesUnlike Uranium-235, Plutonium-239 is fissionable with both slow and fast neutrons. Nuclear reactors designed to use fast neutrons, using Plutonium as the fuel, therefore do not need a moderator. There are however extra demands on the coolants used in fast neutron reactors because they should provide efficient heat transfer and should not slow down the fast neutrons. This requirement can be satisfied by molten metals such as Sodium and Sodium-Potassium mixtures which are used for this purpose. Being transparent to neutrons, fewer neutrons are lost in the coolant which as a consequence does not become so radioactive. Molten Lead is also being used in some reactors since it has the added advantages that it provides excellent radiation shielding, and allows for operation at very high temperatures. It is also inert and thus safer to handle than the chemically reactive Sodium. Fast neutron reactors can be designed as Breeders which produce more fissile fuel than they consume or simply to as Burners which consume the fissile fuel.
Breeder reactors are designed to produce nuclear fuel in bulk from more abundant non-fissile isotopes thus maximising the production of fuel. They can use slow moving neutrons from thermal reactors using Uranium-235 as the fuel to provide the required neutron irradiation, but they more commonly use fast neutrons from the fission of Plutonium-239, in so called Fast Breeder Reactors (FBR), as the neutron source.
Plutonium-239 is produced by neutron irradiation of non-fissile Uranium-238 as an unavoidable side effect in all Uranium fuelled reactors. (Uranium-238 forms the greater percentage of the Uranium fuel charge. See above) This reaction, described in the theory section, is a primary objective of the breeder reactor, (the other is power generation) and for its contribution to be maximised it needs to be maintained by fast moving, high energy neutrons which are more efficient than thermal neutrons in transmuting the fertile Uranium-238 into Plutonium. Since fast neutrons have less probability of capture than thermal neutrons, the more fissile Plutonium-239 is used in preference to Uranium-235 as the fuel to enable the release of enough neutrons to sustain a chain reaction. Furthermore since fast neutrons cause less fission than thermal neutrons, the production of fuel can be enhanced at the expense of the generation of power. Breeder reactors can also be based on slow moving neutrons released in thermal reactors but the Uranium-235 fuel must be enriched to about 20% or more to maintain the reaction. Plutonium breeder reactors use a blanket of fertile Uranium-238 (depleted Uranium) or Thorium-232 around the core of fissile Plutonium-239. Fission of the Plutonium-239 releases more neutrons into the core than conventional thermal reactors and since the reactor does not use a moderator, these are fast, high energy neutrons. The higher concentration of neutrons in the core is sufficient to maintain the chain reaction while at the same time transmuting the non-fissile Uranium-238 or Thorium-232 in the fertile blanket into Plutonium-239. In this way the breeder reactor can generate 20% to 40% more fissionable fuel than it consumes.
Fuelling a fast breeder reactor with Plutonium requires a reprocessing plant which can handle large amounts of spent fuel with high Plutonium concentrations. Very few of these reactors have been built due to their expense and the fire hazards associated with sodium coolant.
In the breeding of Plutonium fuel in breeder reactors, an important concept is the breeding ratio, the amount of fissile Plutonium-239 produced compared to the amount of fissionable fuel (such as U-235) used to produce it. In the liquid-metal, fast-breeder reactor (LMFBR), the target breeding ratio is 1.4 but the results achieved have been about 1.2 . This is based on 2.4 neutrons produced per U-235 fission, with one neutron used to sustain the reaction. The time required for a breeder reactor to produce enough material to fuel a second reactor is called its doubling time, and present design plans target about ten years as a doubling time. A reactor could use the heat of the reaction to produce energy for 10 years, and at the end of that time have enough fuel to fuel another reactor for 10 years.
Breeder Reactors in Summary
Summary of Fission Reactor TypesThe table below shows the major fuels, moderators and coolants used in practical nuclear power generating plants.
Source: International Atomic Energy Agency
Nuclear reactors operate at surprisingly low temperatures considering the immense energy released by the nuclear reaction. Most operate well below 850°C with some working up to 1000°C and the low temperature range of the thermal working fluid limits the Carnot efficiency of the nuclear power plant. The thermal efficiency of UK nuclear power stations averaged 38% in 2005.
The Uranium ores used to manufacture Uranium fuel are naturally radioactive, emitting a relatively low level of ionising radiation, however as a result of the nuclear reactions involved in nuclear power generation, a wide range of new radioactive waste products are produced. Once a fuel element has been used, the remaining fuel material, mostly Uranium, is intimately mixed with highly radioactive fission products which emit energetic beta particles and gamma rays, actinides which emit alpha particles and sometimes neutron emitters as well as parts of the reactor structure which have become radioactive due to bombardment by neutrons. Plutonium-239, the fuel for the H Bomb, a strong alpha emitter with a half-life of 24,000 years, is produced by all nuclear reactors which use Uranium as a fuel whether it is wanted or not, since the bulk of the fuel charge is made up from fertile Uranium-238 which transmutes to Plutonium-239 after collision with a neutron.
Disposal of this unwanted radioactive waste is a major problem. Some fission products have half-lives as short as seconds; others have half-lives of tens of thousands of years, requiring long-term underground storage in facilities such as Yucca mountain until the fission products decay into non-radioactive stable isotopes. In 1000 years the level of radiation of the waste will have reduced to a level below that of the original ores from which the fuel was extracted. Alternatively in countries such as the United Kingdom, France, and Japan, the spent fuel is reprocessed to remove the fission products so that it can be re-used. Once the useful fuel has been separated, what is left is highly concentrated, high level radioactive materials which still need a home. According to The World Nuclear Association - "A typical 1000 MWe light water reactor will generate (directly and indirectly) 200-350 m3 low- and intermediate-level waste per year. It will also discharge about 20 m3 (27 tonnes) of used fuel per year, which corresponds to a 75 m3 disposal volume following encapsulation if it is treated as waste. Where that used fuel is reprocessed, only 3 m3 of vitrified waste (glass) is produced, which is equivalent to a 28 m3 disposal volume following placement in a disposal canister. This compares with an average 400,000 tonnes of ash produced from a coal-fired plant of the same power capacity."
If a nuclear reaction gets out of control the resulting nuclear accident could release unimaginable amounts of energy which could devastate huge areas of urban and rural countryside and the populations which inhabit them. But nuclear melt downs are not the only threat. The public, and particularly employees in the nuclear industry, are vulnerable to low level radiation leaks from nuclear installations and waste disposal sites and the transportation of radioactive products between sites. In view of the potential catastrophic consequences of an accident and the fact that installed safety systems have not prevented three major nuclear accidents, Windscale, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, in the last 50 years, the responsibility for safety is now taken extremely seriously. The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) whose mission is "the safe, secure and peaceful uses of nuclear science and technology." now has 150 member states cooperating and exchanging information on nuclear safety and working through INSAG, its International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group.
The main risk in a fission reactor is the possibility of nuclear runaway since the energy release depends on a chain reaction. Defined by INSAG as "A hierarchical deployment of different levels of equipment and procedures in order to maintain the effectiveness of physical barriers placed between a radiation source or radioactive materials and workers, members of the public or the environment, in operational states and, for some barriers, in accident conditions". It involves multiple, redundant, and independent layers of controls and safety systems to ensure that the failure of any critical system could never cause a core meltdown or a catastrophic failure of reactor containment, as well as systems and controls to protect the employees and the public during normal operation of the plant and the supply chain.
Nuclear Fusion ReactorsSolar Fusion The Sun's immense energy is due to ongoing nuclear fusion occurring in its core where the temperature is around 15 Million degrees Celsius. It's not a simple reaction, but a series reactions starting with the fusion of the two simplest atomic nuclei, the Hydrogen nuclei (protons), followed by fusion of the products of the initial reactions to create ever more complex atomic nuclei in a chain of reactions known as the proton-proton (p-p) chain described on the Nuclear Theory page.
Earthly Fusion Over the last 50 years, the promise of reaping unlimited energy from safe, low cost fuels has launched numerous attempts to mimic the thermonuclear action of the Sun and the stars in order to harness the potential energy of nuclear fusion. However, it is difficult to recreate the environment of the Sun here on Earth and the only successful project so far has been the Hydrogen Bomb. Up to now, none of the attempts to produce sustained, controlled nuclear fusion has been able to produce energy on a commercial scale, although small scale demonstration units have delivered enough power to verify that the principle works and to show that power generation by nuclear fusion should be feasible.
Attempts at achieving controlled thermonuclear fusion have followed two basic methods, magnetic confinement as pioneered by the Tokamak (Russian acronym for: "torus-shaped magnetic chamber") developed in Russia and inertial confinement as exemplified by the National Ignition Facility (NIF) reactor in the USA. Both of these methods employ gigantic, expensive machines whose principles are described here and development times are measured in decades rather than years. The Tokamak was first on the scene, conducting the first ever controlled fusion reaction in 1968. Since then the concept has been used by pursued by several research institutions throughout the world but though they have demonstrated that the technology works, none of these reactors have have achieved breakeven performance to deliver more power than was consumed in initiating the fusion. The best that has been achieved so far in a Tokamak type reactor was achieved in 1997 by the Joint European Torus (JET) reactor at Culham in the UK which produced a fusion power output of 16 MWatts from an input power of 24 MWatts giving a conversion gain Q of 0.65. The NIF Laser Fusion reactor at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in the USA first went live in June 2009 and up to now it is the only reactor to have exceeded breakeven performance. In 2013 it achieved a conversion gain of 1.4 but the technology but its output power is much lower than the Tokamak's and is still a long way from producing commercial power. The quest for commercially viable fusion power continues.
Fusion FuelsThe most promising fuels for achieving practical fusion energy release on Earth are the two isotopes of Hydrogen, Deuterium and Tritium, which may be fused together to produce a positively charged Helium nucleus, also called an alpha particle, and a surplus neutron in a so called D-T reaction. The energy released by the fusion is shared between the alpha particle which carries 20% of the total energy released and the neutron which carries 80%. Hydrogen nuclides carry the lowest charge of all atoms since they have the fewest protons. They therefore have the lowest Coulomb barrier to fusion and so offer the potential to achieve fusion with the minimum amount of applied energy. The D-T reaction yields 17.6 MeV of energy from the fusion of just two atoms, but to give them enough energy to overcome the Coulomb barrier and initiate the fusion requires the energy of each of the Deuterium and Tritium atoms to be raised to between 10 KeV and 20 Kev. This corresponds to a temperature of 100 to 200 Million °C which is over six times hotter than the 15 Million °C temperature at the centre of the Sun. At these high temperatures all matter is in the plasma state, the fourth state of matter, in which the kinetic energy of the particles strips the electrons from the atomic nuclei leaving positively charged ions producing an ionised plasma.
Deuterium is naturally abundant constituting 0.015%, or one in every 6,700 atoms, of seawater from which it is easily extracted. The Earth's oceans contain enough Deuterium to supply the World's energy needs for millions of years. Tritium on the other hand is an unstable isotope of hydrogen in the form of a radioactive gas with a half life of 12.3 years and is not found naturally but would have to be manufactured. Tritium is actually produced by the fusion plant itself as an essential part of the neutron capture system which extracts the heat generated by the fusion reaction. The bombardment of Lithium with neutrons splits the Lithium into Helium and Tritium and since neutrons are produced in abundance by the D-T fusion reaction, the reactor can provide its own Tritium source. Tritium is also produced by similar processes commercially. Lithium is a fairly common metal, also found in seawater as well as many of the world's salt flats. Thus there is sufficient available fusion fuel to supply the world's power for millions of years.
Other possible fusion fuels include the following combinations, Deuterium-Deuterium used in the D-D reaction and Deuterium with the isotope Helium-3 in the D-He3 reaction. The D-D reaction has the advantage that it does not use the expensive and relatively rare Tritium fuel, using only the readily available and less expensive Deuterium. Unfortunately it needs much higher temperatures for fusion. Up to now, almost all reactors have been based on the D-T reaction which requires the lowest fusion temperature. See the list of other fusion reactions which also shows the corresponding energy release of each reaction.
Fusion Energy ReleaseTheoretically, the fusion of one atom of Deuterium with one atom of Tritium releases 17.6 Million electronVolts of energy in the following reaction. 2H1 + 3H1 ⇒ 4He2 + 1 n0 + @ 17.6 MeV Scaling this up, the fusion of 1 kilogram of D-T fuel will thus release enough energy to provide a constant 10 MegaWatts of heating power, which can be converted into electricity, for a full year. Similarly the fusion of just 1milligram (0.000035 ounces) releases 337 MJoules of energy which is equivalent to 80.7 kg of the explosive TNT, enough to blow a fusion reactor apart. See Fusion Energy Release and the table of Energy Content of Fuels.
Fusion requires temperatures about 100 million Kelvin (approximately six times hotter than the sun's core). The high density of the Sun allows the temperature for fusion to occur to be around 1.5 x 107 K
Fusion PowerThe potential energy available from nuclear fusion is unlimited, but in reality, delivering this energy is proving to be an elusive goal. The actual energy delivered by fusion from the various experimental reactors rarely approaches the amount of energy used to create the fusion reaction with the very best reactors just breaking even.
Fusion is the combination of the two fusion fuel elements, as the result of externally supplied energy, to produce a new element with a consequent release of energy. This is often called the burning of the fuel. As the temperature of the burning fuel rises, the fusion reaction rate increases so that the fusion eventually becomes self-sustaining. Ignition is defined as the state in which the energy released by the fusion reactions is sufficient to produce self-sustaining fusion of new fuel nuclei without the need for an external energy supply. Note that ignition is not a necessary condition for a practical reactor since burning alone can release more energy than the energy supplied from external sources.
There is no critical mass for sustained fusion explosion. The fuel mass can be as small as desired. The fusion conversion gain factor, or quality factor, Q is defined as the ratio of the energy released by the fusion or "burning" process and the energy used to create and sustain the fusion in a steady state. Sometimes the ratio is defined in terms of power rather than energy. The condition of Q = 1 is referred to as breakeven. Unless Q > 1 there will be no surplus usable energy. Note: The conversion gain refers to the input and output of the fusion reaction only. It does not include the energy consumed in generating the driver power used to initiate the fusion, nor does it include the efficiency loss associated with capturing and converting the energy output of the reactor to usable electricity if that is its purpose. Since the surplus energy usually appears in the form of heat there will be a further conversion loss involved in generating electricity from the heat. This means that only 35% to 45% of this surplus energy can be extracted as electricity after taking into account the conversion efficiency of steam turbine generating plants. The economic generation of electricity by means of nuclear fusion requires a fusion reactor with a conversion factor of at least Q>10. See how the measuring point influences the fusion system efficiency calculation. The breakeven point is the point at which the fusion power generated is equal to the power needed to maintain plasma temperature so that Q=1. However, this is not sufficient for ignition since energy still has to be supplied to overcome losses, due to radiation, conduction and the energy carried away from the fusion mass by dispersion of the neutrons, in order to maintain the plasma temperature. For ignition the input energy is zero and Q is infinite.
System Dimensioning and the Lawson CriterionIn order to obtain more energy from a fusion reaction than is required for heating the fuel, three conditions must apply simultaneously. These conditions are usually stated in terms of the "triple product" of ion density, confinement time and temperature, known as the Lawson criterion after the British scientist John D. Lawson who first outlined it. For D-T fusion these conditions are:
For D-T plasma fuel the particle density is around 1020 particles / m3. For solid D-T fuel, it is 1030 particles / m3 after compression.
The triple product n T τE is an empirical measure of the conditions necessary for sustained fusion to take place. It is often used as a useful figure of merit to characterise or compare fusion reactions. It depends on factors such as the type of fuel, the method of fusion, the type and method of energy supply and the particle sizes and densities and is valid only for fusion temperatures between 10 KeV and 20 KeV. In practical terms this means that for the reaction to be sustainable, the temperature, or energy, of the fusion fuel has to be very high. The particle density of the fuel must also be very high for reactions to occur reasonably often. At the same time the energy lost from the system per unit time must be relatively small (slow loss rate) which means that the τE confinement time (time constant) equivalent will be relatively long. For ignition to occur, the energy input rate must be equal to or greater than the energy loss rate 1/τE.
Since the units of Temperature X Density are equivalent to a Pressure (From the Gas Laws PV=nRT) the units of the Triple Product are often stated as Atmospheres*Seconds
The following graph shows the value of the "triple product" necessary for sustained fusion to occur over a range of fuel temperatures for three different fuel combinations. It shows that, as the temperature is increased the corresponding triple product necessary for fusion decreases. This is due to an increase in the fusion reaction rate which occurs as the temperature rises. However the fusion rate eventually reaches a maximum or "sweet spot"around 100 to 200 Million °K after which it gradually begins to fall. This sweet spot corresponds to the lowest triple product value at which sustained fusion can occur. For the D-T reaction this optimum condition occurs at a temperature of just over 10 keV. This is six times the temperature at the core of the Sun. See why Solar fusion seems to be possible at a lower temperature. Note that to initiate fusion, both the D-D and the D-He3 fusion reactions require a greater triple product, or greater energy, than for D-T fusion.
The engineering challenge is to find practical fusion methods which satisfy the Lawson technical conditions.
Fusion MethodsTo initiate fusion, the amount of energy in the form of heat and pressure from external sources applied to the fuels must be sufficient to raise the energy levels of the fuel nuclei to a sufficient level to overcome the Coulomb barrier between the nuclei. For significant fusion reactions to take place, these high energy levels of the fuel elements must be maintained for a period long enough for a sufficient number of collisions between the atoms of fuel to occur. Such conditions prevail at the centre of a star where the massive gravitational forces compress the matter, mostly Hydrogen, in its core to extremely high densities and temperatures causing fusion to take place. To produce self-sustaining fusion, the rate at which energy is released by the fusion reaction itself must be greater than the rate of energy loss to the environment from the burning fuel. In the Sun or a star, the gravitational field balances the enormous thermal expansion forces resulting from the fusion, holding the fuel in place and maintaining the thermonuclear reactions in a controlled and steady rate. This stellar process of keeping the fuel in place is called gravitational confinement.
Confinement Various methods have been tried for generating and controlling the high temperatures and huge energy flows involved in keeping the fuel dense enough and hot enough for long enough to undergo sustained fusion in practical reactors. Two of the most successful reactor technologies are described here. Known as magnetic confinement and inertial confinement, they are optimised for the physical nature of the fuel.
The Earth does not have the immense gravitational pressure of the Sun to contain the fuel and compress it to a very high density. For fusion to take place on Earth, to compensate for the lower densities of the available fuels, the fuel or plasma must be be heated to temperatures six or more times higher than those in the Sun in order to achieve a sufficient number of fusion reactions. This is consistent with meeting the requirements of the Lawson triple product. Creating the conditions necessary to initiate and maintain D-T and similar fusion reactions places severe requirements on the fusion reactor design. Unfortunately there are no materials for containing the plasma which can withstand the temperatures required of over 100 Million degrees Kelvin. Furthermore the plasma must be prevented from coming into direct contact with any solid material which could lead to contamination of the fuel so that the plasma must be enclosed in a vacuum. Obtaining a high enough particle density of gas molecules confined within a vacuum chamber for fusion is a major problem. Since the high temperatures also imply high pressures, and fusion causes very fast expansion of the plasma, some external force is required to act against this thermal pressure and keep the plasma in place.
In the stars the necessary confinement force is provided by gravitation. On Earth the force can be provided by magnetic fields in magnetic confinement plasma fusion reactors. Alternatively the fusion reaction may be triggered in solid fuel pellets by a high intensity energy pulse in the very short period before the resulting plasma starts to expand. In this case there is nothing to counteract the expansion of the plasma but its inertia keeps the material together long enough for fusion to occur. The inertial confinement time is simply the time it takes the plasma pressure to overcome the inertia of the particles before they are dispersed, hence the name.
In general, increasing any one of the three factors ( n T τE) of Lawson's triple product should allow the requirements on the other two factors to be reduced. As an example the fuel used in the magnetic confinement reactor has a very low density because it is a plasma of gas ions and it is contained in a vacuum. It also has a high rate of energy loss. It therefore needs longer confinement times for sufficient particle collisions to take place. Inertial confinement by contrast uses solid fuel which has a much higher density so that it can work with very short confinement times.
Fusion of the Deuterium and Tritium fuel is designed to take place in a high temperature plasma circulating in a toroidal vacuum chamber such as the Tokamak reactor. Since the plasma consists of moving charged particles, it constitutes an electrical conductor carrying a current, hence it can be affected by magnetic fields. The tendency of the hot plasma to expand can therefore be counteracted by the Lorentz force, arising from its reaction with a magnetic field of appropriate geometry. The plasma is created by injecting a small puff of the gaseous fuels into the toroidal chamber where they are heated to over 100 Million °C by electrical induction created by a transformer, with its inner poloidal magnetic coils acting as the primary winding and the plasma itself as the secondary winding. See diagram of the MCF magnetic fields below. Strong magnetic fields around the torus serve two purposes. They are used to increase the plasma density to a level necessary to achieve fusion. At the same time, since they are not affected by heat, these fields act as a container confining the extremely hot conductive plasma to the centre of the toroidal chamber so that it does not touch or damage the chamber walls. After compression the particle density is greater than about 1020/m3 and the corresponding confinement time must be longer than 1 second. Note that a particle density of 1020 particles (fuel ions)/m3 is very low corresponding to a mass density of around 1milligram/m3 which is about one millionth of the density of air of 1.225 kg/m3 (at sea level and 15 °C). The minimum Lawson's triple product ( n T τE) required for sustained D-T fusion in an MCF reactor is approximately 3.5 X 1028 °K seconds/m3 ≡ 3 X 1021 keV seconds/m3. See how this is implemented in the Tokamak Reactor
Before compression in an inertial fusion reactor, the density of the solid fuel used for ICF, at atmospheric pressure, is about 2 X 108 times denser (by mass) than same fuel in the form of a plasma. Solidifying the gaseous Deuterium and Tritium fuel by cooling it to -255 °C, to create small, dense, solid pellets gives the reactor an energy efficient head start in reaching the density required to satisfy the Lawson criteria for fusion. The fuel pellets are bombarded from all directions, to provide uniform illumination of the target, by simultaneous pulses of high energy such as intense UV laser radiation, X-rays, or ion beams, with a duration of around one nanosecond and sufficient total energy to cause the pellet to implode. This sends a shock wave through the solid fuel pellet compressing it by 30 times or more causing the inner core to reach such a temperature and pressure that it fuses the D-T fuel in a mini thermonuclear explosion. After compression the particle density is around than 1030/m3, which is around 1010 times denser than the plasma used in magnetic confinement fusion. Because the density is so high, and the energy loss rate is relatively low compared with the plasma fuel, the confinement time can be 1010 times less to compensate and still satisfy the Lawson triple product requirement for fusion. This means that the confinement time can be as low as 10-11 seconds or more. The inertia of the fuel ions within the pellet keeps the pellet together only long enough for fusion to take place under the influence of the high energy pulses before the explosive fusion reaction blows the pellet apart. There is therefore an upper limit of less than a nanosecond (10-9 seconds) to the possible confinement times for inertial confinement reactions because fusion must occur during the very short period before disintegration of the fuel pellet. The minimum Lawson's triple product (n T τE) required for sustained D-T fusion in an ICF reactor is approximately 1028 °K s/m3 ≡ 0.9 X 1021 keV seconds/m3. See how this is implemented in the NIF Reactor
Inertial confinement was first used in the hydrogen bomb where the driver was x-rays created by a fission bomb.
The Tokamak Reactor - Magnetic ConfinementThe principles of the Tokamak reactor are described here but it important to note that this is based on experience with small scale experimental units designed to verify the feasibility of key sub-system designs. There is still much work to do to scale up the system to deliver commercial power generation.
Deuterium and Tritium atoms are heated and fused together in a high temperature plasma circulating in a vacuum chamber where the fusion reaction produces Helium and a surplus neutron. The plasma is maintained in place by powerful magnetic fields. Large amounts of electric power are needed to heat the plasma and to power the electromagnets. See diagram below.
Surplus neutrons from the fusion reaction are captured by a Lithium blanket where they react with the Lithium producing more Tritium which is one of the two fusion fuels as well as alpha particles (Helium nuclei). The heat energy released by the fusion should be enough to maintain the fusion reaction and to provide a surplus which can be used to generate electricity. The surplus heat from the fusion and the neutron capture by the Lithium is used to raise steam in a heat exchanger and the steam is used to drive a conventional turbine generator.
The quest for cheap, renewable energy using nuclear fusion is pushing the limits of technology in several directions simultaneously. Immense technical problems have to be overcome and solutions proposed and progress is painfully slow since it could take several years just to implement and verify a major sub-system change.
The design of the reactor is dictated by the requirements for containment of the D-T reaction since there are no materials which could possibly withstand the extremely high temperatures necessary for fusion to take place. The solution is to confine the Deuterium and Tritium fuels in a plasma circulating within a toroidal chamber and kept from touching the walls by powerful magnetic fields.
Note that the confinement time is measured in seconds. This indicates the order of magnitude of the engineering aspirations. A few seconds of fusion is currently regarded as a great success with the best achievement so far measured in minutes, albeit at a low efficiency. At higher plasma densities the required confinement time could be shorter but the ability to achieve higher plasma densities is limited by the ability to achieve higher magnetic fields.
Only the Helium atoms are confined (neutrons, having no charge, escape the magnetic field) and therefore only 20% of the total fusion power is available for plasma heating
The enormous JET Tokamak fusion reactor is designed to deliver megaWatts of power from a plasma of only a few grams of Deuterium and Tritium circulating within the torus.
The temperature of the D-T plasma in the Tokamak is over 100 Million °C. Since the plasma comprises charged particles it becomes conductive and can be controlled by electrical and magnetic fields. These fields confine the plasma to the centre of the torus so that it cannot come into contact with, or damage the chamber walls.
Instabilities of the plasma are a serious nuisance rather than a major disaster.
The fusion needs to take place in a vacuum to avoid contamination by other elements. Since the plasma circulates in a toroidal shape, it needs a toroidally shaped vacuum chamber to contain it. Though the amount of fuel is very small, only a few grams, the cross section of the chamber needs to be very large to allow sufficient separation of the extremely hot plasma from the chamber walls . The outer diameter of the chamber ring in the JET Tokamak for example is over 10 metres. The cross section of the toroidal ring through which the plasma flows is "D" shaped with an internal height of over 4 metres. This is a small scale demonstration plant! The physical requirements of this huge structure are severe.
Magnetic confinement is used to contain the high temperature plasma preventing it from touching the chamber walls. Since the plasma comprises charged particles, its location can be fixed by two superimposed external magnetic fields interacting with the magnetic field of the plasma current itself as shown in the diagram below.
In current Tokamak designs the Joule heating supplied by by the poloidal transformer is insufficient to raise the temperature to the necessary 100 Million °C or to maintain it there. Consequently, the heating must be supplemented from other sources. The gas laws tell us that the temperature of a fixed volume of gas is directly proportional to its pressure. The same compression heating effect can be achieved in the Tokamak by increasing the magnetic field confining the plasma. At the same time this compression increases the plasma density facilitating the fusion reaction. RF heating is another technology which is used for plasma heating. Once fusion starts the fusion products contribute to the overall heating. The high speed neutrons produced by the fusion carry 80% of the energy released, but having no charge, they escape from the magnetic field. Because they have high penetrating power, most of the neutrons pass through the chamber wall and are eventually captured by the Lithium blanket to which they give up their energy. A neat way of passing the fusion energy through the chamber walls without heating them up. The neutrons which don't make it through the chamber wall react with the materials in the wall causing them to become radioactive. The positively charged Helium ions (alpha particles) on the other hand carrying 20% of the fusion energy remain trapped by the magnetic field in the plasma where they give up their energy in collisions with the Deuterium and Tritium ions increasing their temperature in the process.
If the heat energy is sufficient and there are enough D-T ions to accept it and given enough time for collisions to occur then fusion can occur. This is the basis of the Lawson criterion.
Only the Helium ions are confined (neutrons escape magnetic field and plasma) and therefore only 20% of the total fusion power is available for plasma heating
Additional heating is needed to raise the temperature of the plasma
The Lithium blanket serves several purposes:
Alternative designs for of the blanket are still being investigated. Options are pellets of Lithium or pebbles of Lithium alloys which help facilitate the extraction of the Tritium and the purging of the Helium produced in the blanket. This is complicated by the fact that Lithium melts at 180 °C and boils at 1347 °C. More likely, Lithium will be used in liquid form which simplifies the heat transfer in the heat exchanger.
The first stage is to extract energy from the fusion process. Up to now, no fusion reactors, including Tokamaks have produced significant power with a conversion gain better than unity. The main difficulty is in producing and maintaining a sufficiently high temperature for fusion to occur. So far this has been, and can only be, possible in short pulses with Tokamak designs dependent on transformer heating. The pulse durations achieved, that is the duration of controlled maintenance of the plasma, have been only a few tens of seconds. The confinement time which is the average time that the ions and electrons remain in the plasma (as specified in the Lawson criterion) is generally much shorter than this. Commercial power plants will need pulse lengths of many hours or days.
The heat exchanger is an essential component in the energy conversion chain, designed to take the heat out of the Lithium blanket as explained above. The electricity generating equipment does not see the power pulses coming from the reactor. By converting the energy to heat, the energy pulses are simply smoothed out in the heat exchanger.
Generating electricity by nuclear fusion or nuclear fission involves three energy conversion stages, each with its own efficiency losses. While direct energy conversion from a nuclear reaction in a single stage may not yet be practical, it seems that the possibility of a two stage energy conversion by combining fusion with MagnetoHydroDynamics (MHD) is still beyond reach. MHD is designed to extract electricity directly from a charged plasma by Faraday induction. The Tokamak already provides the plasma, but it would need to use a different pair of fusion elements which didn't produce a troublesome neutron. It's a pity a way has not been found for using it to generate electricity directly by MHD techniques.
Compared with a fission reactor in which a serious nuclear accident could result if the chain reaction gets out of control, a fusion reactor is intrinsically much safer. The processes involved in a fusion reactor are all set to work at optimum conditions of temperature, pressure and magnetic field. Any deviation from these optimum values, for whatever reason, will immediately cause the fusion energy release to fall and the conditions for maintaining fusion, the Lawson criteria, will rapidly be breached causing the fusion to stop. There is thus no possibility of nuclear runaway and the basic high energy fusion reaction is intrinsically safe.
The largest current experiment for controlled nuclear fusion in the world is the Joint European Torus (JET) at Culham in England.
The JET Tokamak
Source - European Fusion Development Agreement (EFDA)
Work on the JET project began in january 1983 and by 1991, it was possible for the first time in the history of fusion research to release considerable energy by controlled nuclear fusion using the JET. For a period of two seconds, the JET facility generated a fusion power of 1.8 megaWatts. In 1997, JET produced a peak of 16.1 MW of fusion power, sustained for over 5 seconds, from an input power of 24 MW. This corresponds to a conversion gain Q (the ratio of the output power to the input power) of only 75%. A self-sustaining nuclear fusion reaction would need a value of Q that is greater than 5. After a quarter of a century we may know a lot more about fusion and Tokamaks, but we still can not deliver reliable sustained power even on a laboratory scale.
In June 2005, the construction in France of a much larger Tokamak, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), was announced by the European Fusion Development Agreement (EFDA). Designed to produce several times more fusion power than the power put into the plasma over many minutes it dwarfs the JET. Described as "an experimental step between today's studies of plasma physics and future electricity-producing fusion power plants" it is expected to deliver 500 megaWatts of fusion power from an input power of 50 megaWatts with a conversion gain Q of 10 and is expected to cost $16 billion while still not delivering commercial power. Full Deuterium-Tritium fusion experiments are not scheduled to start until 2027.
While the demonstration units may verify the technical feasibility of generating electricity by nuclear fusion, the economic viability is yet unproven. Proving out all of the necessary subsystems and scaling up the design from the demonstration systems to commercial generating plants is far from complete and industry experts don't expect to achieve the goal of commercial exploitation until 2030 or 2040. Meanwhile engineers and physicists have a new set of expensive toys to play with. Nice work if you can get it!
Inertial Confinement ReactorsInertial confinement fusion (ICF) is loosely based on the principles used in the Hydrogen bomb only on a much, much smaller scale. The fusion fuel is subjected to very high pressure and temperature in order to initiate fusion. In the case of the Hydrogen bomb these necessary operating conditions are created by the nuclear fission explosion of an Atom bomb.
For controlled ICF, the extreme operating conditions are achieved instead by bombarding a small, solid pellet of fuel with a very high pulse of energy causing its outer layer to be rapidly heated to the necessary 100 million degrees Kelvin and at the same time causing the inner part of the pellet to be compressed very quickly with huge pressure to a density 20 times that of solid lead. The intense heat coupled with the increase in density of the fuel is sufficient for fusion to take place. This all happens in around one to three nanoseconds. The energy pulse could be derived from a variety of sources, known as drivers, including, ultra violet (UV) lasers, X-rays, electron beams and plasma (ion) beams.
The first fusion reactor ever to successfully achieve a conversion gain greater than unity was the National Ignition Facility (NIF) reactor at the US Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The operating principles and challenges of inertial confinement fusion are explained here using the technology of the NIF reactor, and the results of its breakthrough "over unity" fusion demonstration, as an example.
In its simplest configuration, a small pellet of frozen Deuterium-Tritium mixture (D-T) held in a plastic shell is irradiated evenly from all sides by intense bursts of energy from very high power laser beams, or X-rays, focussed directly on the target, explosively detonating its outer layers and initiating a mini thermonuclear explosion at the core of the pellet. The diagram below illustrates the stages of the process. Other inertial fusion drivers include heavy or light ion accelerators.
The alpha particles (Helium nuclei) produced by the D-T fusion reaction carrying 20% of the released fusion energy deposit this energy within the fuel mass further heating the fuel and increasing the rate of the fusion reactions. The neutrons with 80% of the energy escape from the fuel carrying their energy with them.
The confinement time of the plasma is mostly determined by the radius of the capsule. The inward shockwave travels approximately at the speed of sound. The inertial confinement time depends on the outward movement of the ions. It is typically only a few nanoseconds and is roughly the time that it takes an ion to travel at its thermal speed across the radius of the fuel pellet. The higher the temperature and density, the more vigorous the reaction and the more difficult it is to contain the plasma.
The fuel pellet is a 60/40 mixture by weight of Deuterium and Tritium enclosed in a small plastic capsule and frozen to its solid state at -255 °C (18 °K) to keep it solid. The capsule is necessarily small, typically about 2 mm in diameter and only a few milligrams or less in weight, for two reasons. Larger fuel volumes will require larger input energies to bring about ignition and the ignition of larger pellets releases so much energy that it could result in damaging the reactor chamber. For example, the fusion of 1 milligram (0.000035 ounces) of D-T fuel releases 337 MegaJoules (93.6 KWh) of energy, equivalent to 80.7 kg of TNT. Typically only a small proportion of the fuel will undergo fusion unless full ignition is achieved since the very short confinement times limit the duration of the fuel burn.
The driver is the mechanism by which energy is delivered to the fuel capsule. The NIF reactor uses a laser for this purpose. With an output of 1.8 MegaJoules (MJ), it is the world’s largest and most energetic laser. To put this energy output into perspective, 1.8 MJ is equivalent to only 500 Watthours or 0.5 "units" of domestic electricity. But the NIF laser can deliver this energy in 3.6 nanoseconds. This means that it can supply a continuous power of 500 TeraWatts (trillion Watts) for 3.6 nanoseconds. This is almost 1000 times more than the 0.535 TeraWatts average instantaneous of electrical power consumption of the entire USA.
The process starts with a Neodymium:glass laser which generates pulses of infrared light with precise frequency and pulse shape control. The pulse duration can be varied between 1 and 15 nanoseconds and it is shaped to provide precise timing of the energy flow to optimise the timing of the heating of the plastic ablator surface followed by the implosion of the fuel. Instabilities which cause the uncontrolled break-up of the fuel pellet are suppressed by starting with a low energy intensity followed by a rapid rise to maximum intensity for around 3 nanoseconds during the second half of the pulse.
After launch, the laser pulse is split into 48 separate beams and passed through 48 preamplifiers each with a gain of 109 times. Each beam is further split into 4 beams to give a total of 192 beams which are passed back and forth several times through 192 main amplifiers consisting of reflective Neodymium doped glass slabs (lasing material) surrounded by Xenon flash lamps powered by a large capacitor bank. The intense flash of light from the lamps pumps the Neodymium atoms up to a higher energy state so that the laser beam gathers more light and energy as it passes through giving a further gain of 106 for an overall gain of 1015.
In the final optical assemblies, the laser's infrared (IR) light with a wavelength of 1053 nm is converted into ultraviolet (UV) light with a wavelength of 351 nm in Potassium Dihydrogen Phosphate (KDP) crystal frequency converters which merge groups of three of the incoming photons into a new photons with three times the energy and one third of the wavelength. The shorter wavelength beams are absorbed more readily by the fuel targets and cause less uncontrolled preheating of the fuel by electrons.
An array of mirrors and optical assemblies positioned around the reactor chamber converge the beams and focus them with great precision on the tiny 2mm target, held on a supporting arm, at the centre of the 10 meter chamber.
With direct drive, the fuel pellets are irradiated directly by the laser beams fired from the chamber walls 5 metres away. To maximise the effect of the incident radiation and ensure controlled fusion, the energy must be precisely concentrated into the centre of the pellet. It is not enough that the beams merely hit the pellet. The 192 beams must enter the 2 mm fuel pellet, at precise angles, at 192 points evenly distributed around its surface. Misalignment will result in insufficent energy being concentrated on the centre of the fuel pellet to initiate fusion and will instead cause breakup of the pellet. In practice, it is very difficult to achieve the necessary uniform illumination of the target simply by focussing the multiple laser beams directly on the pellet. According to Bruno Van Wonterghem, operations manager for NIF "The precision NIF is designed to achieve is similar to throwing a dime from Livermore to San Francisco [a distance of about 64 kilometers] and landing it perfectly inside the coin slot of a parking meter."
The NIF overcame this alignment problem by using indirect irradiation by means of X-rays derived from the laser beams to initiate fusion instead of the laser beams. Its breakthrough experiment, in which it achieved the first ever over unity conversion gain, used a fuel pellet weighing 0.17 mg, contained in a 2mm diameter plastic capsule held at the centre of a, hollow, open ended, cylindrical shaped cavity made of gold called a hohlraum .(German "hollow space"). The 192 laser beams are fired through the holes at each end of the cavity at such an angle that they don't touch the capsule but instead hit the inside wall of the hohlraum. The laser pulses heat the gold of the hohlraum to such a high temperature that it in turn radiates a pulse of X-rays which are more dispersed than the laser beams and which spread more uniformly around the capsule, not just focussing on the 192 points. About 15% of the incident energy is lost in this process. Only about 15% of the resulting X-rays actually impinge on, and are absorbed by, the target capsule but this is enough to initiate the blow off of the plastic ablator and the implosion of the fuel.
NIF Fusion Energy Flow Summary (The 2013 demonstration)
Approximate energy levels at different process steps of the NIF reactor
Energy of the infrared light pulse emerging from the Neodymium:glass laser.
The energy consumed by the amplifiers and beam splitters in raising the energy in the beams is 422 MJ. (Efficiency 0.85%)
Energy output from the laser amplifiers applied to the frequency converter.
Combined output energy after conversion to UV radiation of the 192 beams impinging on the hohlraum target.
Theoretical prediction of the energy remaining after the UV radiation is converted to X-rays, about 85%.
Theoretical prediction of the estimated percentage of the available X-ray energy in the hohlraum which is absorbed by the outer layers of the target, about 15%.
Like the X-ray energy in the hohlraum, this is difficult to measure and so is an estimated value which is equivalent to 2.8 Watthours. It is less than 0.6% of the laser energy fired at the hohlraum target.
NIF reactor - Energy out
Calculated from the count of neutrons emitted. Neutrons are a product of fusion reactions so they are used as a measure of the energy output. The output energy is equivalent to 3.9 Watthours and is released in the form of heat. 4 Watthours of electrical energy is just enough to power a 60 Watt electric light bulb for 4 minutes.
Note that the system conversion gain or efficiency just refers to the production of heat from the fusion reaction. It does not include any further system thermodynamic and efficiency losses incurred, typically 35%, if the heat would be used in applications such as generating electricity from the heat of fusion.
Sources: The European Fusion Education Network (fusenet), LLNL and others.
The NIF 2013 Demonstration - Performance Evaluation The results of the NIF demonstration are often misinterpreted as having produced net energy. This is plainly not true but the experiment did achieve a most important milestone: The amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel. The demonstration thus achieved a fusion gain greater than unity which enabled the "burning" of the fuel but this is still a step short of the lab's goal of "ignition" or self sustained burning. Burning only occurred while the fuel was being irradiated by energy from an external source, in this case, during the pulse of X-rays derived from the laser pulse. See note about Conversion Gain and Breakeven.
The results indicate that, using the NIF reactor, the overall fusion "system" gain would have to be of the order of 30,000 just to breakeven or 100,000 if the desired system output was the generation of electricity. The biggest factor adversely affecting the system conversion gain however is not the low gain of the fusion reaction, but the poor efficiency of the optical amplification and frequency conversion systems which consume 422 MJ of energy just to provide the 1.8 MJ laser power output, - an efficiency of only 0.4%. Improved laser, or alternative drive, technology could thus make a dramatic improvement in system efficiency.
Since the results of the 2013 demonstration were published, NIF fusion development has continued. Two months after the first successful shot, modifying the shape and timing of the laser pulse used to detonate the fuel has enabled the conversion gain to be increased by over 20%. Subsequently the efficiency losses in the laser driver chain have been reduced by 25%.
For comparison, in 1997 the JET Tokamak produced 16.1 MWatts of power for 5 seconds equivalent to 22.4 kWh or 80.5 MJoules.
Alternative Drivers The method of providing the driver energy for detonating the fuel in ICF reactors was pioneered with lasers, but the limited efficiency of these systems and the difficulty of scaling up the technology and modifying it for commercial applications has prompted research into other methods. Both heavy and light ion beam driver systems offer significant advantages over laser drivers. Reactor designs can be greatly simplified and they are capable of higher energy pulses, better driver efficiencies and higher repetition rates. Multiple ion beams are accelerated through a series of linear accelerators and made to converge on the target. Heavy ions deposit more energy per ion than lighter species, and therefore a smaller ion current is needed to deposit a given total energy.
Scaling Up Laser Fusion Systems for Commercial ApplicationsWhile the experimental results are encouraging and demonstrate the feasibility of inertial confinement fusion, there's still a long way to go to scale up the immense demonstration system into a commercially viable heat source for powering an electricity generating plant. The following are some of the issues which need to be considered. The existing NIF driver system is over complicated and very inefficient. A simpler, more efficient system needs to be developed. Besides producing the required power density, a commercial driver must also have an adequate repetition rate and be efficient and reliable. These requirements are more likely to be satisfied by ion accelerators. There's lots of scope for improvement here. The demonstration system generates inconsequential amounts of heat energy which is carried away by neutrons which strike the reactor chamber walls. It does not have a method of capturing the heat. Some of the materials in the chamber walls are unfortunately susceptible to radiation damage from the neutrons produced by the fusion, becoming radioactive as well as mechanically weakened. In a commercial reactor where the production of neutrons will be considerably higher than in the experimental reactor, the chamber wall should be able to withstand this neutron bombardment otherwise it would have to be replaced regularly. It must also incorporate a heat exchanger to capture and extract the energy from the neutrons. Such problems have been investigated in depth in the Tokamak reactor whose walls include a Lithium blanket which serves the dual purpose of generating Tritium as well as capturing the neutrons. Just as the ICF reactor receives its energy in pulses, so it also delivers its energy in pulses. Currently it is only capable of carrying out one fusion shot per day, each of which delivers only a small amount of energy. For commercial use, continuous energy flow is required so that the fusion repetition rate with an output of 14kJ per shot would need to be increased to at least ten shots per second. This would generate an output 3.36 MWh of heat energy per day. But this is not the net energy gain of the system. The overall inefficiencies prevailing in the 2103 "state of the art" system would have to be taken into account and this would have changed the fusion energy gain to a substantial system energy loss. Progess to eliminate system losses and to improve the fusion gain continues. The large number of fuel pellets needed has consequences for fuelling the system. To carry out ten shots per second would require production of 864000 pellets and hohlraums per day of the size used in the demonstration unit. A smaller number of larger pellets could be used but the practical maximum pellet size is limited by the potential explosive power of the fusion. Ii is not unreasonable to expect that with further development the fusion energy conversion gain could be increased high enough to cause self sustaining ignition rather than simply burning. This has the dual benefit of improving the overall system gain and while it would still be necessary to have manageable, low fuel weights, the self sustaining reaction would make more efficient use of the fuel by consuming a greater proportion of the pellet mass thus reducing the number of pellets required. This could be a major problem. The fuel pellets must be refrigerated and fed at high rate into the target holder which will be very hot from previous fusions. The pellets nust also must be placed and aligned very precisely at the convergence point of the laser or ion beams. The debris from the fusion must also be collected and removed on a continuous basis. The cost of the gold used in the hohlraums which are destroyed in every shot is not insignificant though much of it could be recovered and recyled. Nevertheless, it will probably be more cost effective to use an alternative driver system. The cost of the NIF demonstration system has been over $4 billion. Considering the further development which needs to take place and the complexity of the added technical facilities needed by a commercial reactor, it may turn out that though the system is technically viable, it may be difficult to produce a commercially viable system. The ICF system has the same safety issues as the Tokamak, though working at a lower pressure, without the high temperature plasma, it could be considered slightly safer.
The Way Forward We know inertial confinement fusion using lasers works. We also know laser systems have their drawbacks and the technology is still in its infancy. Development work is however continuing at various research institutions throughout the world, across the whole spectrum of fusion technology, to come up with alternative reactor designs with more efficient driver systems, practical heat capture systems and fuel feed systems. There's a long way to go but we are getting there.
See NIF History
Nuclear BatteriesUnstable isotopes can be used as heat sources in a two stage conversion process using the heat generated by nuclear decay to power a thermal battery. These primary batteries are used for special remote applications requiring continuous power over a long, unattended battery life such as space flight applications.
The following table indicates the decay energy available from some unstable isotopes, however only a few of these are suitable for battery applications
Energy for nuclear batteries is provided by the decay of suitable unstable isotopes. The following is a list of the requirements. High energy density isotopes usually have a short half life so some compromise may have to be made here.
Plutonium-238 fits most of these requirements. It has a half life of 87.7 years and a power density of 0.57 Watts/gram emitting mostly alpha particles. Polonium-210 and Curium-242 (which decays to Polonium-210) emit nearly 200 times the energy of Plutonium-238 but have a half lives measured in days. They also emit dangerous gamma rays.
See Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTG) for a description of nuclear batteries.
See also Generators
See also Nuclear Energy - The Theory
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irradiate the fusion target, rapidly heating its plastic covered surface which evaporates (ablates), at the same time ionising the fuel and forming a plasma envelope surrounding the target.
creates a corresponding inward reaction thrust or implosion accompanied by shock waves which compress and heat the pellet core.
is also transported inwards raising the temperature.
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