How can we create power from nuclear fusion?

November 6, 2010 Ben Harack Ben Harack's Blog, Featured Articles, Fusion Power, Nuclear
Power, Renewable Energy, Slideshow Articles

Contents
 1 What is Nuclear Fusion?
 2 Clarifying fission and fusion
 3 Fusion as a power source
o 3.1 Energy Capture
o 3.2 Thermal Conversion
o 3.3 Direct Conversion
o 3.4 Net Energy
o 3.5 Steady-state power
o 3.6 Safety Concerns
 4 Pieces of the puzzle
o 4.1 Fusion Fuel Cycles
o 4.2 Fusion Techniques
 5 Stay tuned
In early 2010, I conducted research into fusion power as part of my final year of the
physics honours program. I spent several months reviewing literature on the subject.
This cumulated in compiling a comprehensive introduction to the topic as well as
delivering a one-hour talk on the subject three times.

My presentation slides are freely available (in ppt or pdf formats) for those who are
interested in presenting on this topic themselves. If you want to use my content, please
mention where you got it.
This is a series of posts is based on the research I conducted at that time. These posts
are intended to provide a general introduction to the field of nuclear fusion. This article
gives the overview of the major topics. Subsequent posts will expand in more detail on
these subjects.
If someone is interested in digging into the underlying physics of fusion power, I have
laid out some resources in the science behind fusion power. There are also a number
of useful tools for understanding fusion power.

What is Nuclear Fusion?

Nuclear fusion refers to any process of interaction of two nuclei in which they combine
to form a heavier nucleus. For light elements, this process typically emits particles
such as other nuclei and neutrons along with a relatively large amount of energy.
The reason we are interested in nuclear fusion (for power production) is that these
reactions can release much more energy than is required to make them happen. A
very simple analogy would be the combustion of wood. Energy is required to raise the
heat of the wood high enough for it to ignite. Once we have it ignited however, it
produces enough energy to keep itself burning and also release a lot as heat.
Clarifying fission and fusion
The most stable elements on the periodic table are iron and nickel1 . Nuclear fusion
reactions tend to release energy if they combine light elements into heavier products
(as long as the products are lighter than iron/nickel).
On the flip side, nuclear fission reactions that split very heavy nuclei into several
products, releasing energy. If you are interested in nuclear fission power, we have
written a large article on how nuclear fission works as well as a series of posts
on nuclear myth and fact.
One can imagine fusion as building heavier atoms, and fission as breaking up very
heavy atoms. Each process liberates energy that is stored in the bonds between
nucleons (protons and neutrons).

Fusion as a power source

The goal of fusion power production is to harness reactions of this nature to produce
electrical power. In the interests of creating reliable power, it is most desirable to have
an energy source that is steady and predictable, rather than intermittent.

Energy Capture
Emitted energy from the commonly proposed fusion reactions is primarily in the form of
high-energy neutrons and various charged particles.

 Charged particles skid to a halt mainly through electromagnetic interactions.

 Neutrons deposit energy primarily through nuclear interactions.

Stopping neutrons generally requires different shielding than charged particles.

Neutrons cannot be ‘steered’ onto collection areas because they have no electric
charge. The heating created by neutron radiation will be in all directions. This means
that shielding will be very differently designed depending on the fuel cycle. The
fusion fuel cycles, which we look at in more detail later on, are the different reactions
that light elements can undergo. A typical fusion reaction involves reactants that
interact to create products, releasing energy.
We more deeply at these concepts in another of our posts on how we turn nuclear
fusion power into electricity.

Thermal Conversion
Using fusion as an energy source, we can produce heat. Thermal power plants convert
heat into electricity via a heat engine. A well-known example of a heat engine is the
steam turbine, which produces around 80% of the world’s electricity. Thermal engines
are a tried and true method for creating electricity. Most proposed fusion techniques
involve a thermal power plant design.
Converting heat to electricity is generally around 33-50% efficient. That is, we are able
to convert 33-50% of the heat energy into electricity. Heat engines rely on a difference
in temperature between two thermal reservoirs. The efficiency with which we can
convert heat into electricity is governed by a concept called the Carnot efficiency.
The Carnot engine is a theoretical ‘ideal’ heat engine, which does not increase the
level of entropy in the universe. It is impossible to construct a heat engine that is more
efficient than the Carnot engine. Such an engine would violate the second law of
thermodynamics and would be able to create infinite energy.
Our large thermal power plants are able to convert heat into electricity with an
efficiency that is rather close to the Carnot efficiency. We can improve the Carnot
efficiency by having the two heat reservoirs at very different temperatures. The more
different the relative temperatures are, the greater the Carnot efficiency will be. Also,
our working fluid has some effect on the maximum possible efficiency. Steam engines
tend to top out at around 600ºC, while brayton-cycle gas turbines can go above
1000ºC.2

Direct Conversion
Direct conversion involves capturing charged particles to create a current. In this case
the energy is never captured intentionally as heat. These systems are designed to
instead create a current directly. Direct conversion has been considered for some
reactor types that may be built in the future. The reason we want direct conversion is
because it may be possible to achieve efficiencies of 90% in the conversion of fusion
power to electrical power.
In order to utilize direct conversion systems effectively, we need to be using a fusion
process that produces only a very small number of neutrons. This is because
neutrons, lacking electric charge, cannot be ‘steered’ onto certain collection plates. We
will discuss this in much more detail in a later post.
These low-neutron processes do exist. The main problem is that these processes
require higher energies (temperatures) than some other processes. The engineering
challenges of reaching these higher energies are significant, and may not be met for a
very long time. However, there are some intriguing concepts being presented that may
make direct conversion feasible in the coming decades. We will discuss direct
conversion in much more detail in a later post.
Update: We included an in-depth look at direct conversion in a later post entitled how
do we turn nuclear fusion power into electricity?