Fusion companies have now raised $2.3 billion in investment, believing they can begin producing unlimited amounts of zero emissions energy by the 2030s.
A nervous excitement hangs in the air. Half a dozen scientists sit behind computer screens, flicking between panels as they make last-minute checks. “Go and make the gun dangerous,” one of them tells a technician, who slips into an adjacent chamber. A low beep sounds. “Ready,” says the person running the test. The control room falls silent. Then, boom.
Next door, 3 kilograms of gunpowder has compressed 1,500 liters of hydrogen to 10,000 times atmospheric pressure, launching a projectile down the 9-meter barrel of a two-stage light gas gun at a speed of 6.5 kilometers per second, about 10 times faster than a bullet from a rifle.
On the monitors the scientists are checking the next stage, when the projectile slams into the target—a small transparent block carefully designed to amplify the force of the collision. The projectile needs to hit its mark perfectly flush. The slightest rotation risks derailing the carefully calibrated physics.
“Thank God,” exclaims one of the technicians, after reviewing a video playback of the impact of the scientific artillery. It was the perfect shot.
Those in the room at First Light Fusion, in a business park outside Oxford, had just witnessed another hopeful step in a 60-year mission to answer one of science’s most complex problems: how to harness the fusion reaction that powers the sun to generate clean, limitless electricity on Earth.
Gotta keep those Neutron's moving! ;)
ReplyDeleteIt's more about the Gluons, apparently!
ReplyDeleteThe nucleus is a particle zoo: quarks (different types), gluons and more in a soup, flavoured by various fields!
I never got much beyond my high school concept of the atom, I'm afraid. My brother was the nuclear engineering minor. He was a Nuclear Ship Superintendent and used to put the reactors into Los Angeles class attack submarines at Electric Boat in Groton, CT.
DeleteNuclear engineers don't know much beyond the atom either. It's not really needed at that level.
DeleteMy daughter knows everything about the Standard Model but is now a Patent Attorney, tinkering with Samsung patents!
The waste of a State education, I tell thee...