are there any working fusion reactors?
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Research into fusion reactors began in the 1940s, but to date, no design has produced more fusion power output than the electrical power input, defeating the purpose. ... The current leading designs are the tokamak and inertial confinement (ICF) by laser.
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Why using deuterium and tritium as fusion fuel? In a commercial fusion power station the fuel will consist of a 50-50 mixture of deuterium and tritium (D-T), since this mixture fuses at the lowest temperature and its energy yield is the largest compared with other fusion reactions.
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Plutonium, both that routinely made in power reactors and that from dismantled nuclear weapons, is a valuable energy source when integrated into the nuclear fuel cycle. In a conventional nuclear reactor, one kilogram of Pu-239 can produce sufficient heat to generate nearly 8 million kilowatt-hours of electricity.
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Fusion power is the power generated by nuclear fusion processes. In fusion reactions, two light atomic nuclei fuse together to form a heavier nucleus. In doing so, they release a comparatively large amount of energy that arises from the binding energy, creating an increase in temperature of the reactants.
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A reactor core cannot explode like a nuclear bomb. It is lacking three things: confinement of the reaction to a small enough space for a long enough time, the enrichment of the uranium isn't high enough, and the number of fissions taking place isn't high enough to release the required energy for an explosion.
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A nuclear reactor uses the nuclear fission process in a steady controlled way to produce heat. That heats a working fluid like steam that turns turbines which turn electrical generators. A nuclear bomb uses nuclear fission and fusion very quickly, billionths of a second, to produce a vast explosion.
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The World Nuclear Association lists ten RBMK reactors that are still operating in Russia (one RBMK was recently decommissioned in Saint Petersburg in 2018). Russia is now the only country with these reactors, which were designed and built by the Soviet Union.
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While nine RBMK blocks under construction were cancelled after the Chernobyl disaster, and the last of three remaining RBMK blocks at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was shut down in 2000, as of 2019 there were still 10 RBMK reactors and three small EGP-6 graphite moderated light-water reactors operating in Russia, ...
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Fusion has the potential to deliver much more power than fission, but without the long-lasting radioactive waste. There are several "recipes" for cooking up fusion, which rely on different atomic combinations. The most promising combination for power on Earth today is the fusion of a deuterium atom with a tritium one.
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The following advantages make fusion worth pursuing. Abundant energy: Fusing atoms together in a controlled way releases nearly four million times more energy than a chemical reaction such as the burning of coal, oil or gas and four times as much as nuclear fission reactions (at equal mass).
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The key difference between the two is what we do with all of that energy: The reactor will need to contain the energy released from nuclear fusion, while the bomb goes boom, releasing all of it. ... Fusion in the sun's center works by pressing four hydrogen atoms together to form one helium atom and energy.
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High temperature - The high temperature gives the hydrogen atoms enough energy to overcome the electrical repulsion between the protons. Fusion requires temperatures about 100 million Kelvin (approximately six times hotter than the sun's core).
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['2.1. Hydrogen (1H, 2H, 3H) ... ', '2.1. Applications of protium (1H) ... ', '2.1. Applications of deuterium (2H) ... ', '2.1. Applications of tritium (3H) ... ', '2.2. Helium (3He) ... ', '2.3. Lithium (7Li) ... ', '2.4. Boron (10B, 11B) ... ', '2.5. Carbon (13C)']
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A nuclear reactor produces and controls the release of energy from splitting the atoms of certain elements. In a nuclear power reactor, the energy released is used as heat to make steam to generate electricity. (In a research reactor the main purpose is to utilise the actual neutrons produced in the core.
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Why Don't We Have Fusion Power? ... Fusion doesn't produce runaway chain reactions the way fission can, so there's no need to worry about meltdowns. Nor do fusion reactions produce the large amounts of dangerous radioactive waste that fission reactions do. That's why it's such a dreamy source of energy.
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The World Nuclear Association lists ten RBMK reactors that are still operating in Russia (one RBMK was recently decommissioned in Saint Petersburg in 2018). Russia is now the only country with these reactors, which were designed and built by the Soviet Union. Four RBMKs are located in Kursk, a city in western Russia.
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['Nuclear reactor creates heat that is used to make steam.', 'The steam turns a turbine connected to an electromagnet, called a generator.', 'The generator produces electricity.']