Fusion Energy Explained – Future or Failure

The fundamental currency of our Universe is energy.

It lights our homes,

grows our food,

powers our computers.

We can get it lots of ways:

burning fossil fuels,

splitting atoms

or sunlight striking photovoltaics.

But there's a downside to everything.

Fossil fuels are extremely toxic,

nuclear waste is... well, nuclear waste,

and there are not enough batteries
to store sunlight for cloudy days yet.

And yet, the Sun seems to have
virtually limitless, free energy.

Is there a way we could build
a sun on Earth?

Can we bottle a star?

The Sun shines beacuse of nuclear fusion.

In a nutshell - fusion is
a thermonuclear process,

meaning that the ingredients
have to be incredibly hot, so hot,

that the atoms are stripped
of their electrons,

making a plasma
where nuclei and electrons

bounce around freely.

Since nuclei are all positively charged,
they repell each other.

In order to overcome this repulsion

the particles have to be going
very, very fast.

In this context,
very fast means very hot:

millions of degrees.

Stars cheat to reach these temperatures.

They are so massive,
that the pressure in their cores

generates the heat to squeeze
the nuclei together

until they merge and fuse,

creating heavier nuclei
and releasing energy in the process.

It is this energy release

that scientists hope to harness

in a new generation of power plant:

the fusion reactor.

On Earth, it's not feasible
to use this brute-force method

to create fusion.

So if we want to build a reactor
that generates energy from fusion,

we have to get clever.

To date, scientists have invented
two ways of making plasmas

hot enough to fuse:

The first type of reactor
uses a magnetic field

to squeeze a plasma
in a donut-shaped chamber

where the reactions take place.

These magnetic confinement reactors,
such as the ITER reactor in France,

use superconducting electromagnets
cooled with liquid helium

to within a few degrees
of absolute zero.

Meaning they host some of the biggest
temperature gradients in the known Universe.

The second type,
called inertial confinement,

uses pulses from
superpowered lasers

to heat the surface of a pellet of fuel,

imploding it,

briefly making the fuel
hot and dense enough to fuse.

In fact,

one of the most powerful lasers in the world

is used for fusion experiments

at the National Ignition Facility
in the US.

These experiments and others like them
around the world

are today just experiments.

Scientists are still developing
the technology.

And although they can achieve fusion,

right now,
it costs more energy to do the experiment

than they produce in fusion.

The technology has
a long way to go

before it's commercially viable.

And maybe it never will be.

It might just be impossible
to make a viable fusion reactor on Earth.

But, if it gets there
it will be so efficient,

that a single glass of sea water

could be used to produce as much energy
as burning a barrel of oil,

with no waste to speak of.

This is because fusion reactors
would use hydrogen or helium as fuel,

and sea water is loaded with hydrogen.

But not just any hydrogen will do:

specific isotopes with extra neutrons,
called deuterium and tritium,

are needed to make the right reactions.

Deuterium is stable
and can be found in abundance in sea water,

though, tritium is a bit trickier.

It's radioactive
and there may only be twenty kilograms

of it in the world,
mostly in nuclear warheads

which makes it incredibly expensive.

So, we may need another fusion body
for deuterium instead of tritium.

Helium-3, an isotope of helium,
might be a great substitute.

Unfortunately,

it's also incedibly rare on Earth.

But here the Moon might
have the answer.

Over billions of years,

the solar wind may
have built up huge deposits

of helium-3 on the moon.

Instead of making helium-3,
we can mine it.

If we can sift the lunar dust for helium,

we'd have enough fuel
to power the entire world

for thousands of years.

One more argument for
establishing a moon base,

if you weren't convinced already.

Okay, maybe you think
building a mini sun

still sounds kind of dangerous.

But they'd actually be much safer
than most other types of power plant.

A fusion reactor
is not like a nuclear plant

which can melt down catastrophically.

If the confinement failed,

then the plasma would expand and cool
and the reaction would stop.

Put simply, it's not a bomb.

The release of
radioactive fuel like tritium

could pose a threat to the environment.

Tritium could bond with oxygen,
making radioactive water

which could be dangerous
as it seeps into the environment.

Fortunately, there's no more
than a few grams of tritium

in use at a given time,

so a leak would be quickly diluted.

So we've just told you

that there's nearly
unlimited energy to be had,

at no expense to the environment

in something as simple as water.

So, what's the catch?

Cost.

We simply don't know if fusion power
will ever be commercially viable.

Even if they work, they might be
too expensive to ever build.

The main drawback is that
it's unproven technology.

It's a ten billion dollar gamble.

And that money might be better spent
on other clean energy

that's already proven itself.

Maybe we should cut our losses.

Or maybe,

when the payoff is unlimited,
clean energy for everyone,

it might be worth a risk?