22 Facts About Nuclear fusion

Nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei are combined to form one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles.

Nuclear fusion is the process that powers active or main sequence stars and other high-magnitude stars, where large amounts of energy are released.

Nuclear fusion uses lighter elements, such as hydrogen and helium, which are in general more fusible; while the heavier elements, such as uranium, thorium and plutonium, are more fissionable.

Self-sustaining nuclear fusion was first carried out on 1 November 1952, in the Ivy Mike hydrogen bomb test.

The Nuclear fusion of lighter nuclei, which creates a heavier nucleus and often a free neutron or proton, generally releases more energy than it takes to force the nuclei together; this is an exothermic process that can produce self-sustaining reactions.

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At present, controlled Nuclear fusion reactions have been unable to produce break-even controlled Nuclear fusion.

US National Ignition Facility, which uses laser-driven inertial confinement Nuclear fusion, was designed with a goal of break-even Nuclear fusion; the first large-scale laser target experiments were performed in June 2009 and ignition experiments began in early 2011.

An important Nuclear fusion process is the stellar nucleosynthesis that powers stars, including the Sun.

The heaviest elements are synthesized by Nuclear fusion that occurs when a more massive star undergoes a violent supernova at the end of its life, a process known as supernova nucleosynthesis.

The result of the Nuclear fusion is an unstable He nucleus, which immediately ejects a neutron with 14.

Inertial confinement Nuclear fusion is a method aimed at releasing Nuclear fusion energy by heating and compressing a fuel target, typically a pellet containing deuterium and tritium.

Accelerator-based light-ion Nuclear fusion is a technique using particle accelerators to achieve particle kinetic energies sufficient to induce light-ion Nuclear fusion reactions.

Key problem with accelerator-based Nuclear fusion is that Nuclear fusion cross sections are many orders of magnitude lower than Coulomb interaction cross-sections.

Muon-catalyzed Nuclear fusion is a Nuclear fusion process that occurs at ordinary temperatures.

Any given Nuclear fusion device has a maximum plasma pressure it can sustain, and an economical device would always operate near this maximum.

Ratio of Nuclear fusion power produced to x-ray radiation lost to walls is an important figure of merit.

For one, the calculation assumes that the energy of the Nuclear fusion products is transmitted completely to the fuel ions, which then lose energy to the electrons by collisions, which in turn lose energy by Bremsstrahlung.

However, because the Nuclear fusion products move much faster than the fuel ions, they will give up a significant fraction of their energy directly to the electrons.

Temperatures maximizing the Nuclear fusion power compared to the Bremsstrahlung are in every case higher than the temperature that maximizes the power density and minimizes the required value of the Nuclear fusion triple product.

For He-He, p-Li and p-B the Bremsstrahlung losses appear to make a Nuclear fusion reactor using these fuels with a quasineutral, isotropic plasma impossible.

Probability that Nuclear fusion occurs is greatly increased compared to the classical picture, thanks to the smearing of the effective radius as the de Broglie wavelength as well as quantum tunnelling through the potential barrier.

The sun, magnetically confined plasmas and inertial confinement Nuclear fusion systems are well modeled to be in thermal equilibrium.