Stuart Gary reports that clean, cheap nuclear energy is often touted as a means to battle climate change. But how close are we to having nuclear plants that fit the clean, green bill? What are the different technologies and what do they offer?
More than 10% of the world electricity currently comes from nuclear power plants. These existing plants all rely on nuclear fission, a chain reaction where uranium atoms are split to release extraordinary amounts of energy and, unfortunately, high levels of radioactive waste (that are stored safely on site). But a different type of nuclear reaction, nuclear fusion, has been the focus of research to develop nuclear power without the radioactive waste problem.
Nuclear fusion is the reaction that powers the Sun. It involves smashing hydrogen atoms together under extraordinary temperature and pressure, fusing them together to form helium atoms and releasing a large amount of energy and radioactive waste. But unlike fission, this radioactive waste is short-lived, quickly decaying to undetectable levels.
Nuclear fusion happens readily in stars like the Sun, because their cores reach extreme temperatures of over 15 million degrees Celsius, and pressures billions of times greater than our atmospheric pressure on Earth.
Fusion reactors would need to recreate these extreme conditions on Earth, and researchers are using two different approaches to achieve this ... tokamak reactors and laser fusion.
Separate groups of scientists in Germany and China have recently announced they have made breakthroughs in nuclear fusion using tokamak reactors.
Tokamak reactors use a doughnut-shaped ring to house super-heavy isotopes of hydrogen, known as deuterium and tritium. Over 200 experimental tokamaks have been built worldwide, but to date they have all consumed more energy than they produce. Containing the plasma is a challenge to physicists and will likely require decades to solve.
Others types of research underway involve lasers and thorium.
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