Nuclear energy can also possibly be obtained by the fusion process of light nuclei. The basic underlying principle to obtain fusion nuclear energy is to fuse two or more light nuclei of combined mass ‘m’ to produce a single nucleus of mass less than m.
Some typical fusion reactions had been produced in the labortary by bombarding (of appropriate targets) particles, accelerated to very high energies with suitable particle accerlators.
Some typical fusion reactions are listed below:
One main reason the fusion energy release is becoming significantly important is the fact that theoretically there is a large scale possibility of obtaining energies from the fusion of deuterium and deuterium can be obtain in abudence at a significantlly low cost from the sea water. However there are numerous practical difficulties which are to be overcome before using fusion reactions as a source of nuclear energy.
The first and forcemost difficulty in bringing about fusion is that the nuclei to be fused are usually positive charged and so they tend to push apart because of very strong electrostatic repulsive forces. The only way out to overcome this difficulty is that nuclei must be raised to excessively high temperatures (estimated to be about 100 million degree). At such high temperature the random internal motion of particles would bring them within the range of nuclear forces for fusion to occur. This has been achieved in an uncontrolled way in so called fusion bomb.
However a fusion reactor is a distant future possiblity. First we have to develop techniques to achieve fantastic temperatures of 100 million degrees. Then we have to keep fusing nuclei in that region long enough to produce enough energy from the reaction to make it self sustained. The most serious difficulty is however to find suitable containers to confine the material while it is reacting at such high temperatures. Developments in Plasma Physcis has developed so called Magnetic Bottles. At temperature of 100 million degrees the nuclei of fusing nuclei are in an ionized state and behave like a swirring mass of electric charges. One can therefore hope that the under influence of specially designed configuration magnetic fields or electric fields, the reacting material in the form of “Plasma” can be confined within the field bounderies. Magnetic bottles can force the plasma to stay in the region bounded only by magnetic lines of force. Fusion reactors, (when fully developed) will have the following distinct advantages viz. the nuclear fuel is usually obtained from water which would always be available. More over the products are free from radioactive waste and quite harmless.
