4 ms·
Not a nuclear physicist, but IIRC sustainable fusion requires three factors: time, pressure, temperature. So far, you can basically choose two of them at a time
by retSava 7y ago
Not a nuclear physicist, but IIRC sustainable fusion requires three factors: time, pressure, temperature. So far, you can basically choose two of them at a time, and much research goes into having all three at the same time.
Needless to say, but it also requires loooooots of related research, eg materials to handle the magnetic flux, temperature, etc etc etc.
- willis936 7y agoTime has really been the killer. It’s been well understood since the beginning (a brief 60 years ago) how to make plasma hotter and more dense. We’ve learned about limits to pushing these two, but at the end of the day if confinement time was infinity then fusion would be trivial. The thing is even 10^-6 Torr conductive particles squeezed by a 1 Tesla field still like to drift outward and hit the wall. I cannot, in short form, explain how complicated this problem is. However there are no apparent show stoppers.
- jacknews 7y agoI think we can only really do 1 of them, temperature. Pressures are no-where near the core of the sun (300 billion bar), nor are confinement times (years). Which is why we use D-T fusion, which is not at all the same as the "clean, natural hydrogen fusion" in the sun. That whole "clean energy, like the sun" argument is fake.