Fusion Definition and 834 Threads

I understand overall decrease in potential energy of Lighter nuclei releases energy on Fusion- but for heavier nuclei - energy is required- means overall potential energy is not decreased - than how these heavier nuclei sustained their stability.

Hey I am starting a course on plasma physics, I don't understand the principle of Stellarators. If there is no plasma current, how is the mhd equilibrium achieved (J \times B = grad P)? I apologize if the answer is obvious, but I starting with this

Princeton University researchers have https://www.pppl.gov/news/2021/01/new-concept-rocket-thruster-exploits-mechanism-behind-solar-flares a new type of rocket thruster using a fusion reactor which is used to produce plasmoid bubbles. These bubbles are extracted from the reactor at speed of 20...

E= 3/2 (1.381x10^-23)(4x10^8)(2x10^19)50 E= 8.29 x 10^6 Wrong

I have to give a presentation about natural Radiation and I am very happy about it because it includes Astrophysics. I want to explain to my audience how the stars produce cosmic rays. I thought about explaining to them how nuclear fusion and that kind of stuff works but then I realized that I...

What is the limiting factor for a liner and it's implosion in a Z type machine? I wonder have they tried or is it possible to use liners that have a larger radius and contain more gas or gas under higher pressure aka more dense? Are the dimensions of the liner so small because having a larger...

Hello all, I have a community college student who is deciding on his major. He is really interested in Fusion energy and wants to pursue that path. He was in the Engineering Program and now, after doing some research, believes he should be in the physics program (A.S. degree in Physics). The...

Have a thick steel hollow sphere with a inside radius of 20 cm. Then fill it up with sulfuric acid and add water. Then remove the oxygen ions. then give the sphere a negative charge and all the hydrogen ions move to the surface of the inside sphere. then charge sphere positive and the hydrogen...

If it is theoretically possible to compress hydrogen to core of the sun pressures at normal room temperature (practically impossible), the molecules become so close to each other that they could fuse at room temperature without the need of creating millions of degrees kelvin.

Hello! I'm a newbie here, so I apologize if I posted this in the wrong area of if this has already been answered. I'm a Mechanical engineering major at Georgia Tech (but I'll probably switch to Engineering Physics). Nonetheless, I'm very intrigued by the prospect of nuclear fusion and would...

Hi all, I got my Ph.D. a couple of years back (HEP physics) but for various reasons I never applied for any postdoc positions. I ended up working as a software engineer. It's been alright, it pays the bills, but I really don't give a damn about the work and feel quite unfulfilled and...

So in a DnD story, someone made a bomb by putting 3375ft^3 of water into a 0.5ft radius sphere and caused it to make a nuke. I was thinking if this was possible then what would actually happen, so I spent an afternoon looking for the answer and only got the pressure and density...

In previous manifestations explaining the Coronal Heating Problem, scientists pointed out the discontinuity between a very hot Solar interior, the 'cool' Photosphere and a Hot Corona. According to the newly modified entry in Wikipedia, they now explain the discontinuity only between a cool...

Can tritium and tritium fuse?

Hi everyone, I am trying to figure out the following question: What is the typical mass of the plasma (in typical working configuration) in current nuclear fusion reactor designs? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER: "...plasma volume of 840 cubic meters..." So all I need is the plasma density...

I'm working on programming a particle simulation that visually shows the nuclear fusion reaction rate of deuterium at different densities and temperatures, but I'm having trouble understanding exactly how nuclear fusion cross section diagrams are supposed to be interpreted. (The simulation...

Q1=2.5(390)(90-30) =58500 Q2=2.5(4000) = 10000 Qtotal = 58500+10000 Q=68500 =6.8x10^4 my teacher sent this as a homework but the options were 4.9x10^4 J 1x10^4 J 6.8x10^5 J 5.9x10^4 J im confused is is this a typo or did i do something wrong

Q1 = m(ice) * Cv * ∆T = amount of heat the ice absorbs Q2 = m(H2O) * Lf = amount of heat the water loses Q1 = (4*8 g) * (2198 J/g*K) * (0-(-15)) = 1.055 * 10^6 J Q1=Q2 Q2 = 1.055 * 10^6 J = m(H2O) * Lf Lf = 1.055 * 10^6 J / m(H2O) = 1.055 * 10^6 J / (0.25 L * 1000 g/1L) = 4220 J/g My answer is...

I am trying to wrap my head around the concepts in fusion. They talk about ion density, but I don't ever see that expressed in pascals, for instance. Why is that? I understand that confinment time is also important for successful fusion and that they go hand in hand, but I'm not concerned about...

I would like details on CNO Cycle Carbon Fusion about the exact energy release of an entire cycle through the reaction and other details you would think would be important about the CNO cycle.

What are the pressures and teperatures needed for artificial deuterium-tritium fusion? In other words, what are the minimum values for each that allow fusion to occur? Is there an equation for it?

I might be interested in researching nuclear fusion reactors after college. What majors or double majors would be best suited for this career path? Physics, nuclear engineering, materials science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, etc?

Hello All: Read an article about new trend in fusion science about hydrogen-boron 11 fusion Called HB-11 fusion and a start up are doing a research on it using pulsed laser What I don't understand how it is considered a possible new method for energy production when we know hydrogen and...

Hi guys. I'm a third year physics student. Next year I'll be in my final year. I'm interested in studying fusion in the future. Unfortunately I have not done plasma physics as part of my degree so I don't know much about it yet. However I'd like to do an internship abroad this summer. Ideally I...

Summary:: I am looking for topics to give a presentation on. Hi everyone. If this is in the wrong section feel free to move it. Anyway, as part of our lab course, on top of doing experiments we will also have to prepare a 20 minute presentation on a chosen topic on physics. This is not like...

Fusion ignition is a self sustaining fusion reaction because the heat is so high that any cooling that does happen due to radiation or loss of mass will not stop the fusion reaction. This is really the key to the dream of endless energy, since fusion will give you electrical power forever...

I thought to myself , have there any been any physical attempts or calculations in theory about the possibility of creating a net electrical gain of energy from a pulsed fusion approach where a high pressure/density gas mixture is prepared constantly within a container and a high current pulse...

Can fusion reaction propagate inside a (very thick walled) cappilary if fusion has been initiated at one end? In this situation it seems like all the energy would have nowhere to go but into heating and pressurizing the fuel, providing conditions for further reaction. I imagine this is a...

Homework Statement: Calculate energy released in the reactions below, and compare them (see full question below) Homework Equations: a) FISSION: 1g of U-235 splits into La-148 + Br-87 b) FUSION: 0.5g of D2O with 0.5g of T20 creates He-4 and a neutron useful equations: E = Δm(c^2) Hey, can...

Regarding electricity generation from a fusion reactor: I can't seem to find any discussion about the percentage of fusion product neutrons that can be realistically caught in the thermal blanket to utilise the energy they carry from the fusion reaction. The neutrons from fusion have to be...

At the early 20th century, people can only achieve fusion by smashing atoms together via particle accelerators. That obviously outputs much less energy than input, and takes forever just to fuse a single gram of hydrogen to helium. Currently, speaking of thermonuclear reactors we always think of...

From time to time I think about such ideas among other things. I know the Penning trap and I see it is a good device for catching small to medium quantities of particles with similar charge. So I thought a little how would one create something similar but for a neutral or quasi neutral plasma...

Let’s ditch chemical fuel (even like scramjet, aero spike and SABRE) and venture to the future, for only thus we can become a multiplanetary species, and establish a true interplanetary/interstellar transit system. For atmospheric ascent: 1.Fusion reactor (thermal power)+Thermal ramjet...

why does a polywell not generate net power? what are the loss mechanisms?

In fusion reactions, lighter nuclei are combined into heavier ones (atomic mass increases); so the direction is from left to right (shown on the diagram). Therefore, in the fusion of 'light elements' the total final binding energy is higher (the related arrow points upward); so ##B_2-B_1>0## and...

The best-known classes of nuclear transmutations are fission and fusion: Nuclear Fusion Under normal condition, nuclei do not stick together; because they repel each other at large distances (due to the electrostatic repulsion 'barrier') and thus the strong nuclear force cannot act. But if these...

Radioactive decay modes always release energy; but why can't nuclear fusion of light elements be a mode of radioactive decay? I guess because although such processes are exothermic, we need an inaccessible fairly high amount of energy to overcome the electrostatic repulsion barrier. But now...

I am currently a high school student in Hawaii, and I am interested in R&D of nuclear fusion for practical use. I just find it so fascinating that one day we could possibly harness unlimited power with very few consequences. Because of that I want to get advice on a few things. 1) What should...

If the gas in the fusion reactor was compressed as much as possible wouldn't that increase the efficiency of the reactor and therefore make nuclear fusion possible. It would significantly increase the chances of hydrogen atoms colliding with each other and therefore creating much more power.

The question says that the process is melting, so temperature must increase. Hence, Delta T > 0. Also, it is given that the slope for its fusion curve is -ve, which means that as we increase temperature, the pressure will decrease. So, Delta P < 0. The question asks to prove that the substance...

Minute physics made an interesting video for laymen describing the feasibility of muon catalyzed fusion, specifically stating that the current state of technology would lead to an endothermic process. I was wondering if it would be possible to use muons in different fusion configurations, for...

Surely the real efficiency of Fusion power is the percentage of neutrons that can be caught to extract kinetic energy from. I am assuming it is the neutron that is carrying the nuclear energy that can be recovered from the fusion reaction. Now I'm pretty sure neutrons cannot be focused, so the...

How would electricity be generated from a nuclear fusion reactor? How soon do you think that fusion power plants will become a reality?

Video Link According to the video in the link above the binding energy for deuterium is about 2 MeV and the binding energy for tritium is about 8 MeV so the total for the input items is 10 MeV the binding energy for helium is 28 MeV I am confused by this part if the resulting binding energy is...

Hi. My high school physics book doesn't elaborate the idea of binding energy and how it's related to fissions and fuisions adequately in a way that made me have wrong thoughts about these ideas. What i understand after doing some research is that: - Binding energy is the energy that has to be...

Hello everyone. I've always wanted to be a scientist, and in recent years I've figured out that I want to be a physicist. What are of physics has been a little harder to figure out, since there are a lot of areas that interest me, however, recently I have been getting more and more excited about...

I was reading the wiki page on CNO [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNO_cycle ] which says; for CNO-II; "In a minor branch of the above reaction, occurring in the Sun's core 0.04% of the time, the final reaction involving 15N...does not produce carbon-12 and an alpha particle, but instead produces...

Want a nuclear fusion reactor for your home or office? No problemo... https://physicsworld.com/a/physicists-spot-the-signatures-of-nuclear-fusion-in-a-table-top-device/

There's an MIT lecture on youtube where they talk about novel high temperature super conductors and how it will vastly benefit fusion. He claims that these higher temperature super conductors can generate a stronger magnetic field with just liquid nitrogen. They also claim that keeping the...

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/physicists-flip-the-d-in-tokamak-get-unexpectedly-good-result/ I wonder if it'll fit into a Tesla and then we can remake the Back to the Future with a Tesla movie.