Fusion problem cracked, energy in sight?

New Delhi: Prospect of producing unlimited, cheap, safe and clean energy in future brightens as an important problem, facing man-made nuclear fusion, is believed to be cracked by US physicists.

As opposed to fission technique used for nuclear power and atomic bombs, where nuclei are split, atomic nuclei are fused together to release energy in fusion technique.

Particles are rammed together by powerful magnetic coils to form a charged gas called “plasma” inside a doughnut-shaped chamber of a fusion reactor called a tokamak.

India, along with a consortium of countries, signed a deal last year to build the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in southern France as a test-bed for an eventual commercial design.

The partners of ITER are the European Union, the United States, Japan, Russia, China, India and South Korea.

The $ 12.8-billion ITER scheme, with a construction period of about 10 years and an operational lifespan of 20 years, entails building the largest tokamak in the world at Cadarache, near the southern French city of Marseille.

A prototype of commercial reactor will be built, once the ITER works successfully. And in case the commercial reactor works, fusion technology will be rolled out across the world.

But experts are not too optimistic due to several challenges that ITER designers are facing.